Are We Blind, Too?
John chapter 9. Let’s jump in. This is a wonderful story. John, sometimes they’re long chapters and sometimes he kind of speaks in a way that is a little bit hard to process and understand. But this is just so good right here.
Series: John
John 9
David Stockton - September 20, 2020
Are We Blind, Too?
(Starting at. 6:07)
John chapter 9. Let’s jump in. This is a wonderful story. John, sometimes they’re long chapters and sometimes he kind of speaks in a way that is a little bit hard to process and understand. But this is just so good right here.
1 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
So Jesus noticed this man who was blind, and as he noticed him, his disciples’ attention went to that person, as well, and they asked this question.
3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
Jesus noticed this guy. And, obviously, there’s something different about him. He’s blind. That has a whole bunch of connotation both in today’s world as well as that world. In this moment, the disciples actually say, “Oh, Jesus is looking at the blind person. Jesus is thinking about the blind person.” So they wanted to add to that and kind of show him how much they know. They say, “Was it this person or his parents’ sin that caused this blindness.” Because that the was the thought. The debate was not whether this was a result of one of their sins, this is like judgment of God. It was, was it the parents’ or his that caused this because he was born this way?”
And Jesus, as he always does, answers in a way that is from a completely different perspective altogether. And he says, “No. You’re totally wrong. All of the answers you think are right are wrong.” Which is a funny thing to hear. It’s kind of how I felt in some of my math classes at times.
It’s like Jesus is saying, “You’re totally focused on the wrong thing.” He actually says this: “This was done so you would know the works of God.”
Now again, for those of us who know Jesus and have read this story, we’re like, “Okay, cool, yeah, Jesus is going to heal the guy.” That ’s the works of God. But that’s not what Jesus was saying. He hasn’t healed the man yet. He’s wanting his disciples to understand, and wanting this blind man to understand, that God is up to something. God has purpose. We don’t need to just focus on cause and origins. We need to focus on purpose. And God has purpose in this. And then he goes on and talks about how we need to work the works of God while we can because it’s going to get more difficult.
6 After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. 7 “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.
There’s no way that people who can see could ever know how dramatic a moment this would be. All his life he has never seen anything. And in one moment he comes out of this water and he’s flooded with light, color, contrast, depth, I don’t know, art people say the other words that I’m trying to say. I mean, all of it! He could see it all in this moment. So he’s pretty pumped.
8 His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” 9 Some claimed that he was.
Others said, “No, he only looks like him.”
But he himself insisted, “I am the man.”
10 “How then were your eyes opened?” they asked.
11 He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.”
First of all, the disciples are with Jesus and Jesus’ attention goes to this person. And they say, “Oh, is it this guy who’s horrible or his parents who are horrible?” Political correctness wasn’t really working in the system at this point. And he goes on and this guy is actually able to see now. He’s walking around and he’s going, “I see you. I see you. I see you…” He’s seeing all these people that he’s never seen before. And they’re like, “Is this the guy that used to sit and beg all the time?”
“No, that’s not the guy.”
He’s like, “I’m the guy.”
And they’re all divided about it. They didn’t get it because they always saw him as a beggar. They always saw him as a blind man. He has no voice. And he’s there and he’s like, “I am him! I used to be blind. I can see. Do you understand what’s going on?” And they don’t. They don’t at all. And this is what they do:
12 “Where is this man?” they asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said.
13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. 14 Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. 15 Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.”
It’s getting more and more concise. You can. understand the frustration. He’s like, “People, do you understand what’s happening in my life right now?”
And they’re like, “Mmmm, I don’t really think you were blind. Let’s take him to the Pharisees because they’ll know what to do about this.
16 Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.”
You can only imagine what’s going on in this guy’s mind right now. “Are you serious? You’re mad at this guy?”
But others asked, “How can a sinner perform such signs?” So they were divided.
John’s making that very clear. Right? Jesus was very popular. They wanted to make him a king just a few chapters ago. In a few more chapters they’re going to want to crucify him because they hate him so much. There is a lot of division about Jesus still today. There are a lot of opinions about Jesus still today.
And John tells us that the reason there are all those opinions is because people who see don’t really want to see. They prefer the darkness to the light. And that’s true in our world today. People want to suppress the truth because they don’t want to have to make changes. They don’t want people to see the truth about them. As long as they are in that space they can never be healed.
There is a lot of division about Jesus once again.
17 Then they turned again to the blind man, “What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.”
The man replied, “He is a prophet.”
“He’s from God. That’s all I know. He’s got to be because I couldn’t see stuff and now I see everything.
18 They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents.
Are you getting how frustrating this must be for this guy? He’s like, “Yeah, I was blind.” And his friends are like, “Nah. We don’t think it was him. Let’s take him to the Pharisees.”
And the Pharisees were like, “Were you blind?”
He’s like, “I was blind.”
They’re like, “Nah. Let’s get his parents.”
So now his parents come.
19 “Is this your son?” they asked. “Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?”
20 “We know he is our son,” the parents answered, “and we know he was born blind. 21 But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.” 22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 23 That was why his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
24 A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God by telling the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.”
25 He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”
“I was blind and now I can see. I don’t know how to not see now. I just can’t help seeing. Every time I open my eyes—bam—everything is there. I used to be so good at not seeing. I used to the be the best at not seeing. I used to be awesome at it. And now, no matter how hard I try, I just keep seeing. Even when I close my eyes, I see the back of my eyelids when the light is coming through. I just see it all the time. I was blind but now I can see. I cannot deny. I cannot go back. Jesus has changed everything.”
26 Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?
27 He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?”
He spent his entire life blind. Rejected. Judged—that either he is evil or his parents were evil and that’s why. He’s been ridiculed, shamed and left out. He’s had to beg just to survive. Even his parents have created some separation from him. He’s not afraid of some insults or some ridicule. It’s all he’s ever known in this life. Not to mention, he can see now. So he’s not afraid of what these people are going to do. He’s like, “I can see. If you try to punch me, I can see it coming now!”
He can see. He’s so pumped. He’s so excited. And these guys were trying to rain on his parade.
I lived in a school of ministry one time. There were a bunch of guys and we all lived in this house. And it was so funny. Sometimes guys would come home and they had just been with a girl they liked. They had been on a date or they were hanging out and sometimes we could even see them. It was at a church, and we were like, “Ha. He likes her.” And they would come home, and we would joke that they would come home with this girl glow. And no matter what you said to them, they would be like, “That’s funny.”
Literally, sometimes we would go, “Watch. I’m going to go punch him and he’s going to be happy about it.” And sure enough, we could go punch him. And he would be so excited because he got to hang out with that girl. And he’s so excited, and you punch him, and he’s like, “Ha. That’s cool. Don’t worry about it.” And you’re like, “This is so weird.”
But this guy is glowing. He can see now and these guys are trying to rain on his parade. It’s not going to work. So he’s messing with them.
28 Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! 29 We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.”
This is a consistent theme in the book of John. But John makes it clear in chapter 1. “In the beginning was the Word (Jesus) and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” He was with God in the beginning. John is trying to make it very clear. These guys don’t know where he came from, but John made it very clear where he came from. He’s God. He’s the Alpha and Omega. So that’s what they say, “We don’t even know where he comes from.”
30 The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes.
Here’s someone doing the work of God and you don’t even know anything about him.
31 We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. 32 Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
34 To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.
That’s a junior high response, right there.
35 Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
Do you believe in the Messiah? Do you believe in the one? That’s what he’s saying. Do you believe that God is sending someone into the world to take away the sins of the world? That’s what John said about Jesus. He was declaring that Jesus was the Messiah. John the Baptist said, “Behold the One who takes away the sin of the world. Behold the One who is coming to undo all the damage that sin has done.
And now he’s saying this one, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
36 “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”
37 Jesus said, “You have now seen him;
He’s like, “You’re looking at him. You know those eyes that used to not see anything? Right now they’re seeing the Son of Man.”
That makes so much sense, that Jesus had marked this day on the calendar before the foundation of the world. This was not a surprise. This was not a moment. This was not something that just kind of happened. But this was God setting up a moment in a man’s life who had known nothing but frustration and pain, now being able to see the salvation of God.
And this is way bigger than his eyes. And that’s what Jesus is trying to say here. He goes on:
37 Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”
38 Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.
39 Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”
40 Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?
41 Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.
So Jesus is trying to do something here. John is trying to help us understand what Jesus was trying to do. This was not just about healing. Does God heal? Yes. Has God healed? He’s continuing to heal. But all of those healings are not to show us God heals every disease in the moment, immediately. But each one of the healings we receive in the natural is basically something that is supposed to help us understand the work of God and what he’s going to do in all of the world. Does that make sense?
Track with me here. Let’s go back to the beginning. Jesus said this was not about the sin of the parents. This was so the work of God could be revealed. Because what is the work of God? The work of God is to undo the damage that sin has done. That’s the work of God in the world. That’s the work of Jesus sent by God. That is the whole thing.
So whenever we someone healed, that’s awesome and wonderful. And we should pray for people to be healed. All of those things are good. But we need to understand that’s a sign, that’s an indicator, that’s an appetizer (so to speak) to help us know the work that God has promised to do for all of creation forevermore.
When we go back and start processing this, it’s so cool. Jesus saw this blind man. He saw him. And God can see every infirmity. He can see the result of sin. And it is true. He says that, “It wasn’t this man’s sin or his parents’ sin.” But it is sin that brought this about. It was just Adam and Eve’s sin.
There was no disease or disorder in the world in the garden. “Behold, all things were good,” the Bible says. But when mankind decided, “You know what? I think I know better than God. I think I’m going to go against what God said,”—when mankind was deceived and they took and ate of that fruit—sin entered the world. And what happened was, sin and death came in. Disease and disorder came. And now, we as humanity, we’ve been living under the shadow of death ever since. Sin and death reign in our mortal bodies. True or false? True! Ever wake up in the morning and, “Ooooh. What was that?” That’s sin and death going, “Ha ha! We got you.” The fact that 100 percent of the people die is proof that sin and death reign in our mortal bodies. The fact that there are blind people, the fact that there are people with other diseases is proof that sin reigns in this life.
And Jesus sees every single one of the diseases and disorders that we have. Diseases our children have. Diseases that we might have. Diseases that our loved ones have. Jesus sees that. He sees all the disorders that we have. Maybe it’s a disordered desire where we long for something that is evil or wrong. And yet, it is so in us that it’s such a painful thing to try to resist. He sees that. He knows that.
When the question comes from our own hearts about something we’re facing, or the question comes to somebody else’s heart that’s looking at someone. “What’s the problem? What’s the sin? What’s the cause of this?” What Jesus is trying to do is to help his disciples, to help us get our minds off the cause. Sin is the cause. But what’s the purpose? What’s the purpose? Why would God allow for sin to reign and death to rule? Why would God allow there to be pain in the world?” And, depending on your theological background, “Why would God cause all these things?”
And that’s what Jesus is saying, “So that you can understand what the works of God are. So that you can know the glory of God.” This is very deep stuff. This is some deep, deep stuff right here.
The first thing we’ve got to understand is that Jesus is calling us to see people, to engage with people. What our motto here at the church is, “We want to put God’s glory on display, we want to build courageous people, we want to engage in society’s pain.” And that’s led us to do a lot of stuff with foster care in year’s past. This summer it’s led us to really figure out how we can get involved with the black community and what’s going on there, because they’re crying out with pain and frustration. So we’re trying to learn what we can do, and we’re trying to link arms. And I’ve sat at the feet of some awesome black men that have really been able to teach me a lot of neat things. I’m going to steer the USS Living Streams into some of those things.
But we’ve got to see people. And I was reading this passage, and studying it, and I was like, “Wait a second. Every day I drive past the Center for Blind Children on Northern, right there.” Super cool building. But I drive right past it. And I’m like, “I don’t really know what’s going on there.” But that’s a part of our community.
One of the things I learned this summer is that at your church, or your table, should reflect your community and who the Lord’s calling you to serve. And I thought about it, and we have a guy, Frank, who’s been in our church a long time and he’s blind. So I called him up and I said, “Hey, Frank, can we talk? I’ve got to ask you some questions about what I can learn, or what you would want us to know in regards to how we can link arms with you. Get our shoulder under the burden you’re carrying. You could teach us some things.”
And he said, “Let’s not do it over the phone. Let’s do it in person.” So we’re going to meet up.
I texted one of the guys who is in the service right now. I said, “Hey, your job is to help blind people find jobs. Can you tell me some things?” And he told me some things.
We’ve got to see people. We’ve got to see what’s going on. We’ve got to engage in society’s pain. I have a daughter who was born with spina bifida. She was born without being able to feel from her hips down. So she can’t walk. When we found out, it was heavy news. But it’s been so interesting because she turned eleven yesterday, which his awesome.
We have one family that we go to their house sometimes. And they’ve bought a bunch of ramps. So they have ramps all over their house. Whenever we come, they put out the ramps. We come in and Bella is going around all over. It’s awesome. I’m not saying everyone here should get ramps. “Don’t invite me over if you don’t have ramps.” I’m just saying that it’s a way they’ve decided, “Let’s get involved. Let’s just join in.”
Another family that our daughter is friends with, they actually bought their daughter a wheelchair so that when they go out, they can go to the mall and they can wheel together. It’s pretty cool.
That is just engaging. We’ve got to be careful we’re not judging, obviously, and pity is not a good thing either. It’s saying, “How can we actually join our lives together?” That’s what I love. It’s not just in the temple. It’s got to be at the table. It’s got to be real. It’s so easy for us to pretend in this place. But it’s got to be real.
I love this. So Jesus saw them, and he’s helping his disciples to see those people. But then he’s trying to get them to move from judgment and pity to really understanding the beautify and the glory of what God’s doing. He’s trying to get them to move in their understanding toward these things. So he starts to talk about, you know, it’s not cause, it’s purpose. He starts to talk about that this is all so that ultimately the glory of God, the work of God can be displayed.
And it brings to mind with this understanding that Tim Keller brought forth in one of his books. What he says is that the gospel has the audacity to claim that what God is up to, the work of God in the world is he is trying to make everything sad come untrue. I love the way that is phrased. It’s really intense. God’s plan is to make everything sad come untrue.
So here he is giving these guys a taste of something sad coming untrue. But this isn’t the way he does it every time. He’s doing this over all creation. This is a taste of what he plans to do over all of creation in time, as he returns to restore everything. So this gives us hope. This is the appetizer. That we’re all headed toward this time where everything sad will come untrue.
But then, Tim Keller adds this, “But somehow it will all be better for having once been broken.” Whoa. It is true. The gospel declares in the face of all opposition that God is going to make everything sad come untrue in time. But the wonder of it all is that somehow it will be better for having once been broken. And that is a heavy thing. It’s a different way to view pain. It’s a biblical way to view pain, not an American way to view pain.
Americans, we think pain is bad. We avoid it all cost. We try to insulate ourselves from all pain. And then, when we’re nervous that we might actually have to use some of the reserves we’ve saved up, because of some of the trouble… we look to the government. The government gives us the PPP.. So then we don’t even have to use the reserves we’ve stored up. The insulation that we desire is so intense. And I’m not making any political claims about PPP’s. But I’m saying this is the mindset of Americans. How do we insulate ourselves so that we never have to deal with pain? That is not a theology of pain that comes from the Bible.
Jesus actually said, “If you follow me hard enough and long enough, you’re going to end up at the cross. Not just as a bystander, but you’re going to be the one on the cross.” But that cross leads to resurrection. Sin and death have all of our lives, everything we’ve ever known, we get to the end of the day and they’re high-fiving each other. “Did you see all that pain we caused? Did you see all the dissension and division–all that hatred?” They’re just high-fiving each other all day long. “Look what we did!”
At one point there came this Jesus guy. Jesus was healing people and sin and death got a little nervous, because they’re like, “What’s this guy about?” And Jesus was actually saying he was taking on sin and death, that he was going to defeat sin and death. They were getting a little nervous. But when they saw Jesus on that cross, and that blood coming at them, and they watched him get weaker and weaker, until finally he gave up, then they started high-fiving each other again, saying, “We still reign over all of humanity.”
And then about, I don’t know how many hours later–I was going to try to do the math, but it’s not going to work–there was an earthquake that woke up sin and death and everything else. Then there were some angels that showed up. Then there was a big stone rolling around. Jesus rose from the dead. And sin and death’s power was broken.
What happened was, now Jesus is that first fruits of resurrection. He was the first sad thing to come untrue forevermore. He was the first thing to go from corruptible to incorruptible. He was the first one to experience resurrection life, a life that can never die. And then he looked to all of his followers and everyone who would hear him and said, “You want to follow me? Because though it is true that you will go to a cross, you will also step into resurrection life. You will become incorruptible. And everything sad will come untrue.”
This is the gospel. This is what Jesus was trying to get everyone to learn. This is what John wanted us to catch from this healing of the man. I’m not trying to take away from healings. Healings are wonderful. I’m praying they’re happening all the time. We’ve seen healings in this church. It’s wonderful. A guy got healed in the middle service, the 9:30 service. And that’s wonderful. But all of that is really just a finger pointing to the full restoration that God has planned for us, where we’ll all be healed. Everything sad will come untrue. But then we’re actually going to see with eyes. We’re going to see with resurrection eyes. And we will be like this blind man and we will be seeing for the very first time.
Listen to this:
The gospel declares that one day we will all have the scales of our fleshly world perspective fall off. And we will see for the very first time how good and right and beautiful and true God is. And everything that he has ever willed and done and allowed is also good and right and beautiful and true. Even all the crappy stuff.
The transformation, the radical moment where this guy went from never seeing anything to being flooded with all of that, pales in comparison to what it will be like for us who are so blind right now to the things of God, so blind to the full reality of who God is and what he’s doing in the world. When we actually either get Jesus to come back and get us, or we go to be with him, it will be like the first time we will be seeing. We will be flooded with the heavenly perspective, and it will be so much more intense than what this guy experienced. That is the gospel. That is the truth. That is the God that we’re dealing with. We cannot make God temporal. We cannot try and fit him into our worldly paradigms. He’s outside of this.
When we see from his perspective, we’re going to see that every single pain was not on accident, but actually, somehow makes things better for having once been broken. This is our great hope. This is why Jesus died.
First Corinthians 13:12 says:
12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face…
Like this guy who could never see. And now the first day that he’s seeing, he sees God incarnate, right? That’s pretty good.
…Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
We’re going to know God fully, even as we are fully known. It’s going to be awesome. It’s going to be awesome.
Lord Jesus, we do thank you for your plans, for they are good, and they’re way more than good. And I pray that you would help us to hold on, to trust you, to believe, to patiently endure until that day where we get to see it clearly, Lord. And I pray that you would help us to see who it is you’re looking at right now in our communities, and that we would be able to see them and not be judgmental, but be able to love them and link arms with them. Lord, I pray for those who are really, really at wits end with the disease and disorders in their life. I pray that today you would wash them over with love and peace, and if so be Lord, that you would even give them the healing they’ve been praying for. We trust you, Jesus. We look to you in this time of uncertainty. We look to you and pray that you would lead us and guide us to those green pastures and still waters.
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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
Who Holds the Power?
We’re going to be in John chapter 8. We’ve been tracking with John. John the evangelist, as he’s called. John the apostle. John the best friend of Jesus, as best we can say. John was a guy that we don’t know exactly how old, but he’s probably late teens, early 20’s, somewhere in there, when he came across this guy Jesus. When he and his brother were fishing, Jesus said, “Come, hang out with me.” And they said, “Okay.” And they did.
(Starting at 3:30)
We’re going to be in John chapter 8. We’ve been tracking with John. John the evangelist, as he’s called. John the apostle. John the best friend of Jesus, as best we can say. John was a guy that we don’t know exactly how old, but he’s probably late teens, early 20’s, somewhere in there, when he came across this guy Jesus. When he and his brother were fishing, Jesus said, “Come, hang out with me.” And they said, “Okay.” And they did.
They started following him and became like students of his, apprentices of his, disciples of his and through that next three years, John went from being someone who was following this guy who had some interesting teaching and words, and was willing to invite John and his brother into this kind of rabbinic tradition—and John thought that was great—to believing that he was the One who made the world. That’s interesting, right? He watched Jesus eat. He watched Jesus sleep. Not in a creepy way, probably. He saw Jesus have to go to the bathroom. I mean, it was just so real, right? They were hanging out.
But through this time three years and then continuing on for the next sixty years of his life he became convinced that that guy, that young, Jewish man that was walking around poor, oppressed, all of that, was actually Messiah, was God who came into this world to save the world from all their sins. And as Jay said, basically to restore everything forevermore. It is fascinating.
And John is writing this gospel so that we, who were not there, would also begin the same journey. Right? That we would begin to trust Jesus. That we would begin to follow Jesus. That we would apprentice our lives to this one named Jesus. That we would be able to recognize that he is not just some historical figure. But he really is God, forevermore alive. Savior of the world. And that John would kind of help show us the journey.
With John it was trust over time. That’s the phrase we’ve been using. That we would believe means to trust more and more over time. As you continue to test Jesus in some ways. As you continue to lean on Jesus and find he is worthy, find he is stable, he is solid. He does what he says he would do. He is faithful to his promises. That you will begin to trust more and more over time and find the riches that are there.
So that’s what the book of John is about. And as we see, John has shared that Jesus, basically from the beginning, he was turning the water into wine, he was feeding five thousand men, he was healing people, he was doing all these things, and people just started to think “This guy is awesome.”
Now, in first century Israel, it was not a great time to be a Jew. It was a tough time. They were under Roman oppression. They were poor. They had this kind of aristocrat class of Pharisees and Sadducees that seemed to do well, but they were oppressive as well, making everybody feel guilty all the time. It was a really tough time. Taxes were unbelievable. It was a really tough time.
So here comes this voice, this figure, this Jewish man that was able to say things that their hearts would burn within them as he spoke. He seemed to speak not as the Pharisees, but as one who had authority. What he said seemed to make sense. It seemed to cut straight to the quick. It wasn’t just propaganda or rhetoric. It was so precise, so powerful and true. And then he would follow it up with healing somebody. So it felt so powerful and real. But then it would actually produce something beautiful and powerful and real.
We’re all professionals at powerful rhetoric these days, right? We get it left side, right side. We get it front side, back side. We get it all over the place. America—that might be one of the best things we do. Powerful rhetoric. Right? You’ve got all that stuff made in China. Well, all of that powerful rhetoric—made here in America.
But what we are all longing for, what the cry of the American heart is, we don’t want rhetoric anymore. We want justice. We want truth. We want righteousness. We want peace. We want unity. These are the things we long for. And the words just, we don’t trust them as much anymore. There are too many words going too many different ways. So we have this cynical heart rising up within us.
And that was the people in that day. Except for Jesus was this weird exception. He was holy. He was righteous. He was acting and living in such a pure way that it seemed very different. But then there was power and authority and substance. So all these people started following him.
And then that moment—the end of John chapter 6 is kind of a culminating moment. Where John he Baptist just had his head cut off by a jewish official that had been given power by the Romans. He cut his head off. And the people lost it. They wanted to do something so they marched out to where Jesus was, out in the wilderness, grieving the loss of his cousin, and grieving the depravity of humanity.
And they came out to him, five thousand strong, five thousand men, and they tried to make him king by force. Which, again, I don’t quite know how that goes down. Like, “Be a king, man. Be a king.” I don’t know. It just sounds weird. But, basically, they were coming, and it was kind of a mob format. And they were saying, “We need a king. We need to go deal with Herod and you’re going to be our king.” And it says Jesus withdrew from them.
Then, at that moment we have chapter seven, chapter eight, chapter nine. We keep going. And it’s Jesus at this point of total popularity, where they want him to rule over them. They want him to lead them to where we get to ten chapters later, and the same crowd, the same group is gathered together and they’re shouting, “We will not have this man rule over us! We will not have this man rule over us!” And Pontius Pilate is saying, “I find no fault in him.” And they say, “Crucify him! Crucify him! Crucify him!” It very well was a lot of the same people.
So John is just showing us this interesting perspective of Jesus, how he’s so beautiful, so right, so true, and yet so rejected by the human heart—the ones he made, the ones he came to save, the ones that he shined his light on.
My question to us today is, where are we at in this? What is the authority of our lives? What are we trusting in these days? What rules over the thoughts in our heads and the actions of our lives?
And this chapter right here, I really do think is Jesus’ answer to anyone who might say, “Why should I give you authority over my life? Why should I let you be in control over my life? Why should I give my life to you?”
I think that’s what the Pharisees are saying to Jesus in this moment in chapter 8. So he gives them an answer. So we’re going to go through seven answers as to why Jesus should be the authority over our lives, why Jesus should be your boss, why you should follow him, why you should commit everything to him, even if it costs you your own life. This is the answer.
John 8. But before we get there, we actually have to read John chapter 7 verse 52, because it sets it up.
[The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53—8:11. A few manuscripts include these verses, wholly or in part, after John 7:36, John 21:25, Luke 21:38 or Luke 24:53.]
1 but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
That’s kind of the way 7:52 ends and begins chapter 8. Now, just a little bit of history for us. The Bible was written—Old Testament was written in Hebrew, New Testament was written in Greek with a little bit of Aramic mixed in there. The chapters and verses weren’t in there when they were written. John didn’t write, “Okay, I’m going to put these chapters in there.” John just wrote this as a letter, something that could be circulated throughout the churches—something that could be shared with people. It was basically like if you were to sit down and write why you believe in Jesus. And then you had people in mind that you want to send this to. That’s the way John was written.
And John was written well after the other gospels were written. The other gospels had already been written and circulated. So John is towards the end of his life. He’s living probably in Ephesus. He’s out in a Greco-Roman world, a little bit out of the Jewish context. And he just decided he can’t not do this. He knows the other gospels have been written: Matthew, Mark and Luke and some others. But he’s like, “I want to write my point of view. I want to write my letter to the people I have in mind.” So this really is his evangelistic letter that he is passing out to the world, his take.
It’s interesting here because it says that the early manuscripts and many other witnesses do not have the story. So it’s a short story many of us are familiar with, where a woman caught in the act of adultery is brought to Jesus and it’s kind of a trap that’s been set for him by the Jewish leaders.
So I just want to make note that the Bible here is trying its best, the NIV writers are trying their best to just give you where all this is coming about. So it’s actually in italics, if you noticed. Basically what they’re saying is, "This has shown up in some of the manuscripts that we have, the ancient manuscripts that we’ve been trying to discover and find. But it doesn’t show up in all of the early ancient manuscripts like everything else.”
So they’re giving you this footnote. They’re kind of saying, “Hey, this one, we’re putting it in here because we do think this actually does pass the test that we give it to make it into this. We do see it show up enough to think, eh, we better not leave it out because I think it is true and valid. However, it’s different from all the other stuff. So we just want to put a footnote so that everybody’s clear, everybody knows what’s happening so you can decide what you want to do with it.”
What if the media was like this? What if the media today was only telling us stories that were so verified by so many manuscripts, by so much testing…and anytime there was anything shady or shaky or not 100% verifiable, would we have any news? I mean, how short —would it be all commercials? I don’t know.
What I’m trying to say is the Bible has so much integrity, you don’t even understand. I can’t get into it like I want to, but you should look it up. If you have any question whether the Bible is a reliable authority in your life, do some work, please. Please. Especially you younger generation that has been told for so long that the Bible is oppressive or antiquated. Please! Do some work.
I mean, just to tell you all the other acceptable works of antiquity. They basically have anywhere between one hundred kind of artifacts or manuscripts. Maybe five thousand if you want to find like Homer’s Iliad or something like that. The Bible has over 25,000. It’s not even a contest. If you believe that Caesar was a real person, you’re going on so much more faith than it would take to believe the Bible and the stories they’re saying. The historicity of the Bible is unbelievable. It’s not even a question at all. The only parts of the Bible that they’re still like, “Well, we don’t really know this…” It’s because they don’t know yet. So many times they’ve been like, “Ha! The Bible’s wrong here. The Bible’s wrong here.” And then a hundred years later they’ll find something and, “grumble grumble. Well, it’s was right…” So anyway, please do some work.
But we’re talking about authority today. The Bible is such a good authority. It has withstood the test of time. This is not new stuff that our society is facing. The Bible has handled this generation after generation after generation after generation. And it’s proven itself to be true. And those who doubt it or those who live without it do so to their own demise. No doubt about it.
Let’s continue on:
1 but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
Now, again, this is a horrific situation. This is religious leaders doing exactly what religious leaders have done often and are continuing to do. They’re abusing power. They’re trying to get what they want through without really caring about people. And it happens all the time. And it’s sad and it’s horrible. And that’s what’s happening to this woman. I’m sure they set the trap for her so they could make sure and find her. And now they’re bringing her to Jesus. And this is a woman who has a mom and a dad, probably some siblings. And this is a horrible situation.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
11 “No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
It’s a short story. A real quick instance of something that happened in Jesus’ life. A trap that was set for him. And the trap basically goes between these two things. The Jewish law says, yes, a woman caught in adultery should be stoned. And there are also laws for the man and where’s the man? There’s a mess here. But it is true that that was a law. God is deadly serious about sin, no doubt about it.
But then, on the other hand, the Romans had a law that they alone were able to issue capital punishment. So if the Jews would have done this, they would have been in violation of the Roman law. So Jesus was caught in that trap, not to mention the trap between, “I thought Jesus would love people and now he’s issuing orders to kill a woman,” versus, “I thought Jesus was about the truth and now he’s not following…” So you can see all of the traps that they’re setting for Jesus here.
And yet, Jesus, knowing everything, he stoops down and just starts writing. We don’t know what he was writing but I think he was probably writing the ten commandments. Just be like, here’s the ten commandments, and then “Who is without sin? You cast the first stone.” I don’t know what he was writing down. But then it’s weird because it says they left, oldest to youngest. That part I don’t know. Because he stooped back and down and was writing. Maybe he was kind of writing their names down next to one of them. “Just in case you weren’t getting it.” Maybe he was writing a date down or whatever. I don’t know. But it was enough for these guys to be like, “All right. I’m out.” Oldest to youngest.
Then Jesus looks at this woman and says, “Where are your accusers?” And she says, “They’re all gone.”
And yet Jesus couldn’t stop there because there was one who was worthy, who was without sin, who could cast the first stone, and that was him. And he said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way and sin no more.”
And that’s the first one. Why should you make Jesus the ultimate authority in your life? Because he knows what you’ve done. He has the right to punish you forevermore. And yet he does not condemn you. This is a fascinating thing.
Romans 8:
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.
Guess what? If you are not in Christ, there is condemnation for you. If you want nothing to do with Jesus, God will grant that to you forever. It’s called utter darkness. It’s called hell. To be without the love and light and peace of Christ, that’s the scary thing. There is condemnation. God does have wrath against sin. If you are still in your sin, there is wrath for you. But whoever comes to Christ, whoever is in Christ, hidden in Christ, the wrath of God is staid because Jesus took it all. There is no condemnation because you’ve been robed in his righteousness. He doesn’t condemn you.
Now, here’s the deal. He will convict you. Christians live with convictions. “I want to go…oh, better not do that.” “Oh, that’s pretty cool—oh, probably shouldn’t look at that.” You know? We’re walking around with these convictions. But these convictions are guiding us more into the light, further into the grace of God. And so we live with these convictions, but these convictions are not condemnation. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ.
If you feel that guilt and that shame in your life from the sin that you have done, if you don’t feel guilt and shame that’s a whole ‘other problem, but for those who understand that you are a sinner, you have hurt people, you have done wrong, and you feel that guilt and shame, come to Jesus. Because he does not condemn you. He will actually do away with that guilt and shame and you can live in freedom. You can live as a beloved. It’s so amazing. Anybody here ever gotten free of their condemnation, guilt and shame? Come on now!
Okay. So that’s number one. Let’s keep going.
12 When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
13 The Pharisees challenged him, “Here you are, appearing as your own witness; your testimony is not valid.”
14 Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I am going. 15 You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one. 16 But if I do judge, my decisions are true, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father, who sent me. 17 In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true. 18 I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father, who sent me.”
19 Then they asked him, “Where is your father?”
“You do not know me or my Father,” Jesus replied. “If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” 20 He spoke these words while teaching in the temple courts near the place where the offerings were put. Yet no one seized him, because his hour had not yet come.
If you’re asking the question, “Why should I have Jesus rule over my life—be the authority of my life?” Because he won’t condemn you—which is fascinating—even though you do wrong. It’s amazing.
The second reason Jesus should have ultimate authority over your life is because he stands with the Father. He says that, “I know where I’ve come from and where I’m going.” He’s come from the Father, he’s going to the Father. He’s standing at the Father’s right side.
This is so interesting because all of this kind of back and forth picking sides that’s going on in our nation right now, in lots of different ways, where you’re at with COVID, where you’re at with racial relations, where you’re at with politics, where you’re at with church, open or closed, there are just so many ways that we can divide ourselves right now and pick a side.
Early on in this, I felt the Lord was bringing to mind that story where Joshua was just about to fight the battle of Jericho. He was off by himself one night, and all of a sudden he sees this shiny figure, this angel-type person dressed as a warrior approaching him. He stands up and he says, “Are you for us? Or are you for our enemies? Are you on our side or are you on their side? And the warrior answers and says, “No. Neither. I’m the commander of the army of the Lord of Hosts and the place you are standing is holy.” It’s like, “Don’t even try and put me on a side.”
Here’s the deal. Humanity is on the wrong side. They’ve got a lot of different sides over there, but they’re all wrong. Anything of human origin is ultimately going to leave you empty. But the goal of your life should be to get on over to the Lord’s side. But the goal of your life should be to get on over to the Lord’s side.
It’s not a matter of “Are you on our side or are you on their side? God, pick a side. God, join a side.” He said, “No, I’m not going to join a side.”
We’ve already seen Jesus is like, “I’m not going to submit myself to human opinion. I’m not going to submit myself to the polls” (so to speak).
So why should we have Jesus be the ultimate authority in our life? Because he’s on God’s side. He stands with the Father. He’s on the right side. If we stand with him, we’re going to find ourselves, no matter what circumstance we are in, to be on the right side. The right side. That’s where Jesus said we should stay. And he is right now sitting at the right hand of the Father.
Let’s continue on:
21 Once more Jesus said to them, “I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come.”
22 This made the Jews ask, “Will he kill himself? Is that why he says, ‘Where I go, you cannot come’?”
23 But he continued, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. 24 I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins.”
25 “Who are you?” they asked.
“Just what I have been telling you from the beginning,” Jesus replied. 26 “I have much to say in judgment of you. But he who sent me is trustworthy, and what I have heard from him I tell the world.”
So the next thing: Jesus should have ultimate authority over your life because he is not of this world. It’s similar to being on God’s side. It kind of meshes here a little bit. Jesus is not of human origin. Jesus is not here today and gone tomorrow. All the faith and trust we put in human leaders and human figures, they will let us down. Even if they never let us down, they die. It’s a let down.
But Jesus is different. He’s the only one that said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.” There have been many people who have said, “I know the way. I know the truth. I know the life.” And you can go visit their graves. But there’s one who claimed to be the way, the truth and the life and you just can’t find his body. It’s just not there. Because he is risen from the dead. The true enemies of humanity are not each other. It’s sin and death. And Jesus conquered them forevermore.
And that brings us to the next point. Jesus should have ultimate authority over your life because he rose from the dead and is coming back again.
Jesus is just continuing to set the stage for this moment. He says, “If I be lifted up…” But I always thought that was on the cross. If he is lifted up then everyone would know. I think he’s referring to the cross, but maybe even more so, “When I’m lifted up out of the grave then you will know that I am who I say I am.”
27 They did not understand that he was telling them about his Father. 28 So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. 29 The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.” 30 Even as he spoke, many believed in him.
And then he goes on and says:
31 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
33 They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”
34 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35 Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 37 I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word. 38 I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.”
39 “Abraham is our father,” they answered.
“If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. 40 As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.
So now Jesus is kind of bringing it home a little bit. He’s talking about his authority from being with the Father, authority that, “Once I’m lifted up you’re going to see what authority I have when I’m raised from the dead.” And he then he starts saying, “And you guys are trying to kill me.”
They don’t deny it now. Remember last chapter they were like, “Why is he saying this? Are you crazy?” This time they’re not denying it. And he says it twice.
And here’s the next thing. Jesus should have ultimate authority over your life because he knows the evil in humanity’s heart. He’s not deceived. He’s not fooled. And it’s hard these days to not be deceived or fooled. It’s really hard these days because the rhetoric is so powerful. Yet, if you make Jesus the Lord of your life, he’s not swayed by popular opinion. He’s not confused.
A good way that I’ve heard people talk about is that we’re in this parade. The parade is coming by and here we are standing on the sidewalk and we’re watching the parade. We can see what’s happening in front of us. If we’re really wise, we can see what’s coming. And then we can also maybe kind of figure out what’s been that can help us a little bit. So we have a little perspective. The Zeitgeist of history can help us understand where we are today, but we can’t really understand our own time. Maybe some of us can see what’s coming a little bit.
But God’s perspective is like he’s up in this blimp above the whole thing. He’s not limited to just seeing a section of time. He can see it all, start to finish. He knows where it turns. He knows where it straightens out. He knows every part of history. He sees it all perfectly. And he can see into the human heart. He can see the selfish ambition. He can see all of the power plays. He can see all the manipulation. He can see all of that. He’s not fooled by that.
It’s not just out there. It’s in ourselves. Sometimes we can’t even see our own. I remember that was a big deal for me in my marriage early on. I was very persuasive. Again, I grew up and my brothers and parents called me the tyrant. I was the youngest and I guess it was the only way I could get things done. I was very persuasive. My dad said I should have been a lawyer. I was good at arguing. Now I’m a preacher. I just say what I say and nobody can argue with me. No—just kidding.
But I was very persuasive. I got married and, again, I was altruistic in my persuasion, as far as I was concerned. But I remember one time Brittany looking at me and saying, “I need you to stop talking.” I said, “What?” She said, “Because I know something’s wrong but if you keep talking I know you’ll convince me you’re right.” It broke my heart. It crushed me because she was right.
I was not just saying the truth to her. I was always trying to spin it a little bit. Even though I wasn’t trying to hurt her, I was trying to get her to see it and feel it the way I saw it and felt it, instead of letting her decide how she sees and feels it and then we work from there. This was a major moment. She couldn’t name it, but she could sense it. And I had a lot of repenting to do in a lot of areas of my life.
And this is the beauty of Jesus. He sees straight through it. You can’t sway him. You can’t convince him of something that isn’t right and true, because he knows. He’s an awesome authority. So different from anyone else that we could authority to. ”
48 The Jews answered him, “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?”
49 “I am not possessed by a demon,” said Jesus, “but I honor my Father and you dishonor me. 50 I am not seeking glory for myself; but there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge. 51 Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death.”
52 At this they exclaimed, “Now we know that you are demon-possessed! Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that whoever obeys your word will never taste death. 53 Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?”
54 Jesus replied, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. 55 Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and obey his word. 56 Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”
57 “You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”
58 “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” 59 At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.
This is a big moment. Still people say that Jesus never claimed to be God. Yes, he did. Yes. And he did so so often and so clearly that they kept trying to kill him, and ultimately did.
So why should Jesus be the authority of our life? Because he is the I AM. If you read the scriptures of what that means. Basically it means that he’s the Alpha and Omega. He is what you need. He is what the world needs. Again, he’s not the Jesus we want all the time. He’s always the Jesus we need.
Right now, what the world needs is Jesus. Right now, what you need is Jesus. And amazingly enough, he has made an offer to you that you can join him. You can follow him. You can be a part of his family. And the authority that he brings is not an oppressive authority. It’s an authority that sets you free.
I watching a little bit of Braveheart last night. It was on TV. Basically, Robert the Bruce, who was king of Scotland, he was talking about William Wallace, who was basically the hero of Scotland. He was saying, “I don’t want men to follow me because I punish them if they don’t. I want them to follow me like they follow William Wallace. His life, his words, his actions inspire people to follow him.”
And that’s the difference. The Pharisees would punish the people or speak judgment from God to them if they didn’t do what they wanted them to do. Jesus spoke in a different way and lived in a different way. He inspired people to follow him. Because he was the truth and he had the truth and he spoke the truth and he acted in truth. Even to the extent of dying and arising from the dead.
Again, if you want to study the historicity of that act of resurrection, there’s more proof about the resurrection than almost any other event in human history, because it’s been a focal point, for sure. But Jesus is a trustworthy authority. He’ll lead you to life.
One last little analogy before we close. We had a guy speaking there on Tuesday, and he was talking about how he used to own a car wash in New York. In that car wash he would have the little signs and instructions when people would drive up. He was talking how, in his life, that’s what it has meant to trust Jesus, to give him authority. He has to put the car in neutral, put his life in neutral—like come to the Lord and say, “Okay, Lord, I’m here and I’m letting go.” A
Then he needed to take his hands off the wheel. Just take your hands off the wheel. And he needed to take his foot off the brake. It’s like, “God I’m going to give you control. I’m going neutral. God, I’m taking my hands off the wheel. Whatever you say, we’ll do. All right God, what are we doing? We’re going there? Okay.”
I love a quote by Pope Francis. “Ask God what he wants you to do and then be brave.” I think he could say, “Ask God what he wants you to do and then take your foot off the brake.”
Right now, as Christians, it’s very important for us…this is my three things:
Consecration. If we really want to have the authority in this moment to be able to speak in a way and live in a way that other people will find Jesus, we need to consecrate ourselves. We need to come out of some things. We need to unsubscribe some things. Consecration is a very important thing right now.
We need to intercede. Intercession is so important. Make sure your prayers are not just about you right now, please. Don’t just pray about your stocks and bonds. Don’t just pray about your needs. This is a time for the church to pray for others. I’m not saying God doesn’t care about your needs. Pray about those too. Just make sure your prayers include others. It’s time for intercession.
And it’s time for evangelism. We’re going to talk some more about that in the coming weeks. There’s nothing that makes Jesu happier than when you tell someone about him. Nothing makes him happier. Nothing.
And Jesus, we do ask that you would consecrate us. That you would pull us close to you. Show us where we’re entangled in the world. Show us the sin and weight that entangles us and help us to pull away from that, Lord. I pray you show us and teach us how to intercede in this time, that we would get to see mighty things happen because of our prayer life. And Lord, I pray that you would give us opportunities this week to tell people about who you are and what you can do. I pray all this in your name. Amen.
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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
Disappointment with Jesus
It’s exciting to be back. We’re going to be in John Chapter 7. I thought the best way to start this next phase of our church was with a teaching called “Disappointed with Jesus.” Some snickers there. John Chapter 7 is where we’re going to be.
There’s a guy named John Cheever. He says, “The main emotion of the adult American who has all the advantages of wealth, education and culture, is disappointment.”
Series: John
John 7
David Stockton - September 6, 2020
(starting at 1:49)
It’s exciting to be back. We’re going to be in John Chapter 7. I thought the best way to start this next phase of our church was with a teaching called “Disappointed with Jesus.” Some snickers there. John Chapter 7 is where we’re going to be.
There’s a guy named John Cheever. He says, “The main emotion of the adult American who has all the advantages of wealth, education and culture, is disappointment.”
And Ravi Zacharias—who actually passed away this summer—says, “The loneliest moment in life is when you have experienced or achieved that which you thought would deliver the ultimate and it has let you down.”
All of the things that we though were solid and stable this year, obviously have been shaken and we’re all left with a little bit of confusion, a lot more uncertainty, and it’s very, very possible that many people in this room, or many people that you associate with, are dealing with severe disappointment with Jesus right now. Because often, the Jesus we want is not the Jesus we need. People are finding that out in the book of John right now in a serious way.
Before we jump in there, I felt so inspired during our worship time—we’ve been focusing on prayer. We felt that that is where we are supposed to be. The reason we did one piano, one singer, was intentional. It’s not just that everyone’s on vacation this weekend. We just feel like the hand of the Lord is heavy on us to be humble, to walk slow, the word “contrite” comes to mind. That’s the posture and position that we feel like Jesus is really calling us to right now. So we are trying to kind of walk slowly and carefully, paying close attention to what he’s doing.
We don’t want to get running. We don’t want to get in a hurry. We don’t want to just go back to the way things were. We want to go forward into the things he’s leading us into. So bear with us. If you’re like, “Hey, I’m good. I’m ready to dance and sing and all of that.” There are a lot of people who are saying, “I really want to be still. I really want to be quiet before the Lord and really hear what he might be saying because I’m a little unsure.”
While we were praying I just really felt the need to pray and intercede for the black community. So if you’ll join me in that:
Lord, we come before you, Maker of heaven and earth. And I just really want to pray that you would be with our black brothers and sisters, especially in Phoenix, that are processing so much right now. They’re having this frustration, this pain, this anger that is legitimate. And they’re trying to figure out what is the right thing to do. And at the same time, they are being offered so many solutions.
And, Lord, I pray that you really would help them find the truth in it all. That you would help them to teach us all. You would raise up leaders and teachers and new John the Baptists, and prophets in the black community that would really be able to help guide us through this confusing time and uncertain time. And Lord, I pray that you would diminish all the voices that are not helping, that are not actually trying to help, and don’t have your truth.
Lord, I thank you that I’m in contact with so many that are giving me so much encouragement, so many black men that are teaching me and guiding me. I just pray for more. I pray that this would be a really beautiful time in the black community. That they would come out of this and be more rooted in truth and love and freer than ever before. I pray you would show our church what we can do.
Lord, I pray that you would show us how to pray, how to love, how to care, how to listen. Lord, I pray for the predominantly black churches in our city, that they would really experience your strength, your favor, your clarity, your joy, your peace and your provision. And that, Lord, we would work together and walk together, as I know it would please you. So I thank you, Lord, that you’re on the move. And we just pray that we would be with you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
John Chapter 7:
1 After this, Jesus went around in Galilee. He did not want to go about in Judea because the Jewish leaders there were looking for a way to kill him. 2 But when the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles was near, 3 Jesus’ brothers said to him, “Leave Galilee and go to Judea, so that your disciples there may see the works you do. 4 No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” 5 For even his own brothers did not believe in him.
Now, this is a moment in time where John, who was with Jesus during all this time, and then when Jesus left, basically continued to walk with Jesus in the Spirit for the rest of his life, until he was old. He was probably in his 80’s or 90’s, maybe even kind of late 90’s. We don’t know exactly. John seemed to keep on living. So he’s writing this as he has processed a lot. This is not just his first take at this thing. All of this stuff about Jesus, all of these memories have really gotten into his system. He’s been living them out and proving and testing them.
So he’s writing these things. And what he’s writing here is this moment of confusion that was going on in Jerusalem. There were all these different groups of people. In this chapter, there are 52 verses. Here are the groups that he mentions. In these two verses that we read he talks about the Jewish leaders and Jesus’ brothers. But he also mentions the disciples who stayed with him and the disciples who left. That’s a reference to chapter 6 at the very end. Jesus basically had 5,000 men. We know about 120 disciples and they were all there at this moment, trying to make him king after he had fed the 5,000 with just those loaves of bread and fish.
And there was this major moment, and Jesus teaches them that he’s not really interested in their movements. He’s not really interested in just feeding them bread so they don’t get hungry. He’s actually a lot more interested in building a kingdom that’s not of this world. He’s actually a lot more interested in feeding their spiritual needs than their physical needs. He’s way more interested in their spiritual formation than their national aspirations. And people were like, “Come again? What did he say? You see what Herod just did to John the Baptist? He took his head off! How could we not march on him right now?”
And Jesus was like, “I’m sorry. This is just not what I’m about.”
It was an intense moment. And then he goes and says, “Actually, if you really want to be a part of me, you’re going to eat my body and drink my blood.” It’s not a real cool thing to say at a moment like that. And so they all left. There were only twelve that remained. And Jesus said to them, “Are you going to go, too?” And they kind of said, “No. We want to stay with you.” But they also kind of said, “We really don’t have anywhere else to go.” It’s kind of a combination. They were like, “You have the words of eternal life. We know that what you’re doing, even though we think you really messed it up right now. We think you know what you’re doing and you’re going to accomplish the good that we really, ultimately long for.” And it was a real moment for them.
There were disciples who left, disciples who stayed. Some other groups: there were the crowds, there were the jews, there were some of the people that believed in him, there were Pharisees, temple guards that went to arrest him but after they heard him speak they were like, “I never heard anybody speak like that. I don’t know what to do.” And then we have the chief priests and Nicodemus.
All of them have a different opinion about who Jesus is. It’s very confusing. Lots of disappointment. Lots of confusion about who he is. And we’ll go through this, but before we do, I want to introduce you to this, in case you didn’t know. There is this Bible translated in kind of like a Hawaiian Pigeon English called The Jesus Book. And I just love it in this passage, in particular. It says this:
Afta dat, Jesus go aroun inside Galilee. He neva like go aroun inside Judea, cuz da Jewish leada guys ova dea stay looking fo him, fo kill him. Now, almos time fo da spesho religious time, wen da Jewish peopo rememba da time dea ancesta guys wen walk all ova da boonies, an stay inside shacks, long time befo. Den Jesus bruddas tell him, “Go way from hea, an go Judea side, so da peopo you wan teach can see da kine stuff you stay doin. If one guy like everybody know bout him, he no goin do stuff wea nobody can see him, yeah? You stay doin all dis kine stuff, so, let everybody all ova da place see ya doin um! You know, even Jesus bruddas neva trus him.
I love it. There you go. Jesus’ brothers never trust him. That phrase really sticks out to me because, first of all, Jesus had brother—and sisters probably. So that’s just wild to think about. Obviously they didn’t have the same dad—virgin birth and all of that—but they had the same mom. So these are his half-brothers. Jesus was the oldest and he had all these brothers. And his brothers, the ones who grew up with him, they don’t trust him. They don’t believe in him. They’ve seen the things he’s done. They’ve heard the things. And everybody else is getting caught up in this Jesus train, and they’re not buying it for a second. They don’t believe him.
I grew up as the youngest of three boys. And my brothers, they don’t believe me. They didn’t believe me. They don’t trust me. They called me The Tyrant. Somehow, I was so small, but I was like a dictator. And they would beat me up all the time. And I never trusted them. My mom would say, “All right. What happened? Who broke that?” Everything was broken all the time. Including my body parts sometimes. Broken arm. Broken collar bone three times. Whatever.
My mom would say, “So, what happened?” And we would all have our own opinion and story. It just so happened every time I told the story it was really good for me. Made me look good. Same for them. So we knew that all of us were liars.
But here’s the trick with Jesus. When Mary would come and say, “Okay, what happened?” everyone knew who was going to tell the truth. Everyone knew what the truth was. Jesus was like, “Well this is what happened.” And his brothers were like (grumbling sound). It was kind of a rough situation. But they didn’t trust him. They thought he might be crazy at this point.
But two of them, for sure, that we know—James, who wrote the book of James in the New Testament, who became the lead pastor of the first church in Jerusalem—went from never trusting him to believing that he was God sent from God to be the Lamb who was slain for the sins of the world. What a trip to go from this moment all the way to that place where James actually was killed because he so believed that Jesus was Lord. His brother was Lord of all, Maker of Heaven and Earth. And then Jude—the guy who wrote the epistle of Jude at the end of the Bible, he also was a brother of Jesus that came to faith that Jesus really was the one he said he was. After the resurrection, they were kind of like, “Uh, all right. That one’s pretty good.” And they believed him. But what a trip that is.
That was their journey. So let’s continue on. It says that Jesus told them, when his brothers were saying, “Go up…”
6 Therefore Jesus told them, “My time is not yet here; for you any time will do. 7 The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil.
And here, Jesus, again, he’s sharing with his actual brothers. His disciples are there with them. There’s this debate about whether he should become a public figure or not, and he’s saying, “You don’t understand. That’s not what I’m here for. That’s not what I’m about.” And he says, “You guys can come and go as you please, but I need you to know that the world hates me.”
Now, at this point, it didn’t seem like the world hated him. They were all a little disappointed. They were all a little confused why he didn’t want to become king and do what they wanted him to do. But, “Hatred? You’re crazy. I don’t understand.”
But Jesus was teaching them something that it’s very important for him to teach, something important for his disciples to understand. And he continues to go back to this time and time again with his disciples. John 15:18 says this:
18 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 20 Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.
So this is later on in the book of John, as the tension is rising, as the heat is rising. Jesus is saying, “Don’t forget. I told you before that if they hate me they’re going to hate you. But let me remind you that if they persecute me, they’re going to persecute you.”
There has not been a nation in human history that has continued to give favor to and believe in the ways of God. And here in America, we have experienced favor as Christians, no doubt about it. Hallelujah. Thank you for all of those who fought for that and are still fighting for that. It’s wonderful to be able to gather in a place like this. But this isn’t true in a lot of the world. And if you follow human history and nations that rise and fall, it’s not going to be true in America forever.
Now am I saying we are about to be persecuted and everybody hates us? No. I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I don’t want us to be unaware of what Jesus is teaching his disciples. If you call yourself a disciple, basically Jesus says, “You’re on your way to persecution. You’re on your way to being hated. You’re on your way to death.” I’m not saying it. Jesus is saying it.
Welcome back to church. Isn’t it good to be here? How disappointing is that? Wait Jesus. You just turned water into wine, you healed people of diseases, you fed five thousand. We were into that. We liked that Jesus. That was great! That’s all we need. And now you’re telling us that’s not what you’re about? That’s not ultimately the most important thing to you? We were becoming popular. People were loving us. And Jesus says, “Just wait. Just wait.”
Again, this is Jesus preempting this thing. It hadn’t actually flushed out in public that everyone was trying to kill Jesus or hated Jesus, but it becomes that way. Jesus saw it coming before it showed up.
He says:
8 You go to the festival. I am not going up to this festival, because my time has not yet fully come.” 9 After he had said this, he stayed in Galilee.
10 However, after his brothers had left for the festival, he went also, not publicly, but in secret. 11 Now at the festival the Jewish leaders were watching for Jesus and asking, “Where is he?”
12 Among the crowds there was widespread whispering about him. Some said, “He is a good man.”
Others replied, “No, he deceives the people.” 13 But no one would say anything publicly about him for fear of the leaders.
You can see that even in our day right now. You have to be so careful what you say in our society these days. Like, am I allowed to pray for the black community in church? There’s part of me going, “That feels dangerous.” You’re praying for people? That should not be dangerous. But these people are all nervous. There’s tension.
14 Not until halfway through the festival did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach. 15 The Jews there were amazed and asked, “How did this man get such learning without having been taught?”
16 Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. 17 Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.
This is a key moment right here. And again, Jesus is speaking to his disciples, as well as he is speaking to the crowd. He’s probably actually on that temple mount. He was a rabbi. His disciples were there and he began teaching them, some other people came. Jesus is kind of the buzz word these days. Probably more people came. But there were probably other rabbis sitting with their disciples, teaching them in this moment. There’s a whole bunch of people in Jerusalem.
And Jesus is telling them, “Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or from man.” Because there was debate as to whether what Jesus was saying was true. And I love this because this is so classic John. We’ve talked about John. John’s premise for writing his book, the Gospel of John, is so that you would believe.
And we spent time talking about the difference of what that means “to believe.” To John, it clearly means “trust over time.” We talked about, for Paul, faith kind of means “pledge of allegiance.” I’m going this way and I’m forsaking everything else. But for John it means trust over time.
Because John was just a fisherman. Out fishing by the Sea of Galilee when a guy came up and said, “Hey, you wanna hang out?” And John was like, “Okay.” And they started hanging out and next thing he knew he was at a wedding with this guy and the guy turned water into wine. And John was like, “All right! I’m with this guy right here.”
And then John saw him heal people and feed five thousand and he heard the teachings and he watched the life that he lived. John was more and more convinced over time that the words that Jesus spoke were true. All the way to the point at which John saw Jesus up on that cross. All the other disciples had forsaken him. John was the only one that was there because he had begun to trust that Jesus was everything he said he would be and more than John could ever comprehend.
And then, when John heard the whisper that Jesus had risen from the dead, he ran to that tomb. And, once again, his trust was deepened and deepened and deepened. And that’s why John is writing these stories, so that you will begin to trust in the name of Jesus, in the words of Jesus, in the way of Jesus. And as you begin to walk in it, you will find that it is true.
When I first started really following Jesus, trying to really practice the way of Jesus, it was great. It was like “This all makes sense.” But then my dad took his life. And there was this moment where I had to say, “Okay, God, I guess right now I’m going to see if this stuff really works.” And it did. And it does.
Shortly after that, me and some friends, one of them is sitting right over there, we decided that we were going to go to Ireland for three months. Just buy a ticket and go to see what the Lord might do. Some stupid young man idea (or young woman, I don’t know. You probably have bad ideas, too.) But it was just like I needed to see. “Okay, Lord, I want to see what you’re going to do. I want to see if you’re going to show up.”
So we did. We just got on a plane and flew over there. And I had, like, a hundred and fifty dollars. And he had, like, fifteen cents. And within three days we had a place to live, we had jobs, and we were going all over Northern Ireland to tell people about Jesus. And then my little bit of faith just got a little bit bigger. And it was just this trust over time.
And then I married this lady named Brittany and she’s like, “Let’s go to Belize where there’s no running water and be there for a year and see what the Lord might do.
It’s like, three months Ireland? Okay. Nine months Belize? Gasp. With a one-year-old? Gasp. And yet the way that the Lord met us in that place was trust over time.
And Jesus is saying, “Look, it’s going to get tough. It’s going to get hard. But if you will do what I’m saying to do, if you will walk with me, you will see that my words are not coming from man.”
And there are a lot of words coming from mankind right now that are not to be trusted. But Jesus is trustworthy—more than we’ll ever know, until that final day when we’ll get to really see that everything he’s done has been righteous and true. Even though the Jesus we want is oftentimesnot the Jesus we need—even though we go through lots of times of disappointment with Jesus, he’s still trustworthy.
Let’s continue on:
18 Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory, but he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him. 19 Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?”
20 “You are demon-possessed,” the crowd answered. “Who is trying to kill you?”
Remember, Jesus is saying, “They’re going to hate me,” but it’s not really prevalent yet. And he’s saying that they’re gong to try and kill him, which is true, but not everybody knows that. So they’re saying, “You’re demon possessed.” That’s what people think about him.
21 Jesus said to them, “I did one miracle, and you are all amazed. 22 Yet, because Moses gave you circumcision (though actually it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs), you circumcise a boy on the Sabbath. 23 Now if a boy can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing a man’s whole body on the Sabbath? 24 Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.”
This is an important word for Christians today. We’ve got to be careful how we’re judging things. We’ve got to pray enough so that we can see clearly enough. Because there are a lot of powerful solutions being offered to people right now that are of human origin and will leave us high and dry. It’s so important that we really take this seriously.
In my weekly email this week I talked about a couple of things that I think are things that have some good but they’ve been mingled with things now to where they are actually very dangerous. And we, as Christians, we have to be very careful that we don’t try and link something that is in our world, our agenda, an idea or political party and try and link it with Jesus. Jesus made it very clear in his day and age (and still today) that his kingdom is not of this world.
Now, politics and social reform—all of those things are good things that it’s good for us to do what we can. But we have to be very careful to not ascribe Jesus to one of those things. Christian nationalism is a dangerous, dangerous thing. I want to read to you what the German Christians in 1934 were saying:
We are full of thanks to God that he, as Lord of history, has given us Adolph Hitler, our leader and savior from our difficult lot.
The German church, the German Christians were praising God for his sovereign providence in bringing a leader like Adolph Hitler to save them. And yet, there were some Christians—we know Bonhoeffer, we know Bart and many others, Corey ten Boom—they weren’t missing it. They were about the Father’s business, the Kingdom of Heaven, in the midst of such an atrocious moment in time.
And I just want to be those Christians. I don’t know how to be. That’s why I’m praying all the time. That’s why for nine weeks you guys came to an hour service and I was here for four hours. And it took the Lord tricking me into a four-hour prayer service, because it’s my job, to get me to actually do it. But, boy, was it rich! Four hours four the last nine Sundays, I’ve just been here, trying to hear from the Lord and it’s been awesome.
We need to be gathering in parks with our neighbors and friends, just saying, “Let’s just go and pray.” I heard about a group doing that. We need to just be getting people together, “Hey, let’s hang out and let’s just pray and see if we can get any idea what we’re supposed to do with our lives and our families right now.”
This church should be a house of prayer. I really want us to not be on the wrong side of this moment. I think we can, but I mean, the Spirit of God wants to lead us into all truth. But we’ve got to listen. We’ve got to be careful we don’t start associating things that aren’t there.
Now, in the first service, people thought that I was saying that Trump was Adolph Hitler. No way! I will name who I thing Adolph Hitler is today. No, I won’t. I’m not even going to try. Give me a break. I don’t know. If I knew it, I would say it. But I’m not saying it because I don’t know. I just know the spirit of anti-Christ, John told us later on, is alive in our world today. And I do know things that are very anti-biblical that are becoming very popular. And we’ve got to be careful and just say, “Okay, let’s see how this rolls out.”
So, please, don’t think I’m saying something I’m not saying right now. You could send me an email and be like, “You were talking about this…” And I would be, “No, I wasn’t talking about that guy!” So, are we clear on that?
But I’m bringing up the German Christians because they got it wrong. And they were calling themselves Christians. And here is Jesus, way before them, saying, “Hey, don’t get this wrong.” There is truth and there is not truth. And Jesus is about the truth. That’s why he’s trustworthy.
So we continue on:
25 At that point some of the people of Jerusalem began to ask, “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill? 26 Here he is, speaking publicly, and they are not saying a word to him. Have the authorities really concluded that he is the Messiah? 27 But we know where this man is from; when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he is from.”
28 Then Jesus, still teaching in the temple courts, cried out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. I am not here on my own authority, but he who sent me is true. You do not know him, 29 but I know him because I am from him and he sent me.”
Now, those of you who don’t think that Jesus ever claimed to be God, you don’t speak Jewish. What Jesus said right there, if you were a first century Jew, that’s blasphemy, unless it’s true. He’s saying, “I’m from God.” Basically, he’s saying, “I am God. I’m the whole deal.” How do I know that? Look:
30 At this they tried to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come. 31 Still, many in the crowd believed in him. They said, “When the Messiah comes, will he perform more signs than this man?”
And then, as he goes on, it’s kind of leading up to this moment:
37 On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” 39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.
On this great moment of the festival—now every day for seven days they’ve been celebrating their wilderness wanderings and how God provided for them there. They actually built tents and booths and they would sleep in these things during the month. They would pour out this water every day from the Pool of Siloam, remembering how God provided water out of the rock in the desert. And there was this one day where they wouldn’t pour water out. It was kind of a climax. Almost like they were saying, “We’re longing fo the day when God once again visits us.” And it was at that moment that Jesus stood up in the crowd and said, “Let all who are thirsty for that moment, let all who really long for God to come again, let all who really long for the loving presence, the satisfying water of God, to come. Let them come to me and out of their innermost beings will gush torrents of living water.” That’s a moment right there.
That’s a moment that Jesus set up, where he was saying, “Everybody can come. Anybody can come and I will give you the water that your thirsty soul needs. And what I bring is not of human origin. It’s not temporal. It’s not going to leave you high and dry in the end. What I bring will begin small, but as you begin to trust and walk, it will keep growing and growing until it just starts pouring out of you forevermore.”
That’s the promise of Jesus.
I want to read a couple of things to close:
Church, don’t be surprised when evil prospers and things with demonic origin and agenda become popular. At the same time, don’t be surprised when doing the right thing, holding on to the truth and submitting your life to the authority of scripture becomes unpopular, hated and even persecuted. Don’t let your disappointment with the Jesus you want lead you to be deceived. Remember that the Jesus you want is not often the Jesus you really need. And the problem is your perspective is not his.
Remember what Philip Yancey says in his book Disappointment with God:
Why the delay? Why does God let evil and pain so flagrantly exist, even thrive on this planet? He holds back for our sakes. Re-creation involves us. We are, in fact, at the center of his plan. The motive behind all human history is to develop us, not God. Our very existence announces to the powers of the universe that restoration is underway. Every act of faith by every one of the people of God is like a tolling of the bell, and a faith like Job’s reverberates throughout the universe.
Every time you and I act in the truth, act in faith, it’s like this reverberating gong that goes throughout all of the cosmos and creation, that the restoration has begun. That what Jesus died to purchase is already beginning to play out. And if it plays out day in and day out, eventually it’s going to grow. The kingdom of heaven will grow. Like that mustard seed it will grow and it will ultimately fill everything. Then, at that moment, our perspective will be clear. And we will say, “Righteous and true are your judgments, O God. Thank you to bringing us to a place where every sad thing has become untrue.”
The restoration has begun in each of us. The kingdom has already begun. And if we will walk out with Job-like faith, we will be a part of that restoration and we will be with Jesus. But here’s the deal. Job-like faith is not an easy thing. Don’t listen to this. Don’t listen to these Bible verses. These are not fun. Okay? I’m just warning you. So, if you’re still listening, it’s your fault.
Job’s faith—he lost everything. He wasn’t just shaken or disrupted. He lost everything. And yet, he says in the face of God, “Though you slay me, yet I will trust you. Because I’m so convinced that you know what is right and you can accomplish it, that, though you slay me, I will trust you.” Because I know that my Redeemer lives, and he will one day stand on the earth. Though my body is destroyed, I will see him person and he will make it all make sense.”
Trust over time.
Let’s pray:
Jesus, wow. You know what you’re doing. You knew what you were doing and you were doing it. And it was amazing and it was wild, and it was confusing for people. Yet, it was beautiful and strong and brought about truth and salvation forever. And here, in our time, Lord, we know you’re alive. We know you know the way. We know you’re at work. But it’s hard to see. I pray that you would strengthen our faith for whatever may come, that you would develop our trust over time. Show us your way and your will and teach us to walk in it. And Lord, we pray right now that all this tension in our society would be released to renewal and revival. But if the tension gets released in another way, we pray that you would just help us to be on the right side of history, of your story—and you’d help us to rescue and save as many as we can, no matter what happens, because we’re so thankful that you rescued and saved us.
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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
Spiritual Warfare
The title of this message is Spiritual Warfare. It’s kind of spiritual warfare Jesus style. It’s going to be a little different than you think. And I’m going to say the word spirit or spiritual a lot in this message. For some of you it’s like,“Oh, that’s not me,” Or “It gives me the heebie-jeebies.” I understand where you’re coming from because I feel a lot t of that as well. However, you need to understand or realize that you are primarily a spiritual being.
Series: John
John 6
David Stockton - August 16, 2020
(starting at 4:10)
The title of this message is Spiritual Warfare. It’s kind of spiritual warfare Jesus style. It’s going to be a little different than you think. And I’m going to say the word spirit or spiritual a lot in this message. For some of you it’s like,“Oh, that’s not me,” Or “It gives me the heebie-jeebies.” I understand where you’re coming from because I feel a lot t of that as well. However, you need to understand or realize that you are primarily a spiritual being.
When God made us, he breathed into our mortal bodies, when he breathed into Adam and that spirit part of you is actually the most real part of you. It’s the part of you that will continue on after your body, your soul, mind and emotions cease to exist. Your spirit lives on. Not only are we primarily spiritual so we need to get accustomed to that and realize that, but God, the God of the bible, the God that made us is spiritual. He is spirit.
Jesus was talking to the woman at the well and he said, “Look, you’re getting all these things wrong because you’re focusing on the practical.” He was saying, “But really what God is looking for, is, God who is spirit, is looking for people who will worship him in spirit and in truth.”
John really is all about that. When we see his take on Jesus, his understanding of Jesus is, Jesus is not just a man, but Jesus was God in the flesh. He was a deity. He was the living God, the creator God, he was with God in the beginning, he was God.
So we really need to kind of try and get rid of those feelings and don’t put the walls up and start to think, “Oh, this is getting weird because he’s saying the word spiritual a whole bunch.” Because that’s really who God is. He is Spirit. He’s created us to be spirit and that’s how we’re supposed to connect with him.
As you see Jesus, the spirituality of Jesus does not make him no good earthly. It actually makes him very beneficial and helpful and all of those things.
Just kind of work on that as we’re going through this. Today we’re going to get one of Jesus’ hard sayings. John, as he’s writing the gospel of John, he’s really trying to help us see Jesus as God, not just man. He’s really trying to help us understand God’s politic. We’ve talked about that. God’s logos, God’s word. The universal guiding principle of the cosmos—that’s what Jesus is.
And he gives us seven I am statements of Jesus. The powerful, “This is who I am.” Jesus declaring who he is. And he also gives us seven miraculous signs, miraculous proofs that Jesus really is who he says he is.
But also in John we have these hard sayings, these things that can only be interpreted with a spiritual mind. For instance, what he says to Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” And Nicodemus is like, “How am I supposed to go into my mom’s womb again?” And Jesus said, “You’re not getting it. You need spiritual eyes to understand this.”
And then he talks about when his disciples came back and were trying to give him some food and he said, “I have food you know not of.” And they were kind of like, “What’s going on? Did someone sneak him some food? He got Uber or whatever.”
Really, what Jesus was talking about is, “You’ve got to understand. There is a spiritual food that is more valuable to me than any physical food I can experience.”
And then today, we have the wonderful, happy phrase when Jesus says over and over again, “You have to eat my body and drink my blood if you really want to live.”
So that’s what we’re going to be getting into today. It’s going to take some effort. If you need to stretch it out a little bit, if you need to shake your head a little, get some water , that’s fine. But let’s get into this and really allow God to speak deep into our hearts and allow all of this that we’re doing in the natural to really impact the spiritual reality of who we are.
John 6:25
25 When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”
26 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. 27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
So, for context, if you go back to last week, John the Baptist is beheaded by Herod. It’s an extremely outrageous moment, where people are so angry, so upset. And Jesus, when he hears that John the Baptist, who was his cousin, was beheaded, he withdrew to a quiet place. Because he didn’t want to hear what the popular opinions were saying. He wanted to hear from his Father. So he withdrew to this quiet place.
But the people that had known of Jesus and experienced some of his miracles and teaching, they gathered together. It says that five thousand men went out to the wilderness to find out where Jesus was. Basically they were saying, “All right Jesus, let’s do this. Let’s go march on these people. Let’s go tear this temple down. Let’s go do whatever we can to throw off this Roman oppression, to get rid of this horrible ruler named Herod.” They were just ready to do whatever. They were sick and tired of it all.
It says that Jesus met them in that moment and instead of turning them away, he fed them. He found five loaves and two fish from a little boy, and he ended up multiplying it and fed every one of those men.
And in some ways you can almost see like a mom, when you come home all angry and upset and your mom says, “Hey just sit down, child. Let me give you some milk. Let me give you some cereal. Let me calm you down a little bit.”
And that’s kind of what Jesus did. So now they’re not only outraged and totally frustrated about what happened in the city, but now they’re also just mesmerized and blown away by Jesus being able to feed all these people. It says that, after it got dark that day, Jesus withdrew again.
They want to make him king by force and kind of have him lead the revolution that they wanted. But instead he withdrew to a mountainside. And he sent his disciple sin a boat across the lake. Right in the middle of morning, it was about 3:00 am, Jesus walks on the water to meet his disciples who are stuck in a storm in the middle of the lake. As soon as he gets in the boat, the storm is gone, they reach the other side.
They’re on the other side of the lake now from where he fed the five thousand, in a place called Capernaum. When the people realize that Jesus is not around and the boat’s gone, they decide, “Let’s get over.” So they get in boats and they go around the lake. They get to the other sid and they find Jesus there. And he sits down and he begins to teach them. That’s where we‘re picking up here, where they say they found him on the other side.
They’re looking for him and they’re still kind of chomping at the bit, saying, “Jesus, let’s do this thing. You’ve got miraculous power. We’ve got a horrible dictator ruler here. Let’s go do something about this.”
And Jesus says, “Hey, you need to understand something. You’re coming to me because you saw a miraculous sign. Because you ate some food.” But he says, “I need you to realize that I’m not here necessarily for the practical realities of life. I’m here because of what needs to be done for your eternal life, your everlasting life.” And he’s kind of trying to help them move from, “Man, Jesus can feed us. Jesus can lead a revolution. Jesus can bring all these social reforms.”
And he’s saying, “That’s not my primary thing.”
And the first thing we need to realize is that most people prioritize their immediate physical needs. But the Jesus way prioritizes the everlasting spiritual needs.
Now this is really important. I’m going to read it again. Please hear this. And the first thing we need to realize is that most people prioritize their immediate physical needs. But the Jesus way prioritizes the everlasting spiritual needs.
It does not mean Jesus doesn’t care about practical needs. You can see that throughout his entire life. He met people’s practical needs. But all of that was so that they would understand that he has the power to meet the much deeper needs of their spirit, of their everlasting life.
He tells them, “Don’t work for food that spoils. Work for the food that endures to eternal life. He wants them to understand how to gauge in the spiritual life, in the spiritual battles. He’s not here to just help them solve their physical, natural, temporary battles. Again, he does care about those things, but not in comparison to the spiritual realities of life.
This is a hard thing. Because oftentimes Jesus becomes a big disappointment for us. If we don’t understand this reality, if we don’t understand that God is spirit and what he is really interested in is what happens in this life and in the next, in the spirit reality of who we are. We pray, pray and pray that God will meet a physical need, give you a physical healing for you or someone you love and you don’t see it. Sometimes it can leave you in a place where you say, “That’s it. Either Jesus doesn’t have power or he doesn’t care.”
And I totally understand that. I’ve been in that situation. But what we have to understand is, and what Jesus is trying to help these people understand is that the priority of God is not to make you physically okay. The priority of God is to make you spiritually okay. And sometimes the physical things that he allows into our lives that are hard will help us in the spiritual. And I don’t like it at all, but that is a reality that we have to understand and trust him in. That’s a hard thing to do. But that is one thing he was wanting them to see.
So then they respond to him in verse 28:
28 Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
So they’re kind of asking the question, “Okay, if revolution and the feeding of the bread and all of those miraculous signs, if that’s not the work of God, what are you saying? What are we supposed to be about?”
29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
30 So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? 31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
So in this passage, they’re asking the right question. But when Jesus says, “You’ve got to believe in the one God has sent” speaking of himself, they’re like, “Well, okay, what are you going to do to prove it? What sign will you give us?”
He just fed the five thousand. He’s done lots of other things that were recorded in John and in other places. And they’re saying, “So what sign are you going to give us so that we’ll believe? We hear you saying that we’re supposed to believe and follow you, but what sign…”
And this is the second things we need to realize. Most people want Jesus to do something miraculous and then they will follow him. But the Jesus way is, as we follow him, we begin to uncover the evidence. We begin to see his power at work. This is again something that can cause a lot of disappointment. You always hear people say, “God, if you get me out of this thing, I’ll follow you forever.”
And again, I think God does sometimes do that. He shows up. He did feed these guys who were so upset, so enraged. He fed them miraculously to just kind of show his compassion, to show how much he loves them, to show that he can do something about it. But he was drawing them away from it, saying, “But I need you to understand that this is what’s most important. The spiritual reality.”
So he asked them to believe. They are saying, “Well give us a sign and then we’ll believe.” And Jesus is saying, “No, I want you to believe. And as you believe, and as you follow me, and as you come and see who I am and what I do, you’ll begin to understand what really is important. And you’ll begin to see the full gospel, the good news of God and his love for you worked out.”
That’s a tricky thing. John basically said that this whole book that he’s written, this whole letter that he’s written is really to help people believe. He’s probably writing it to more Greco-Roman audience than Jews, which is different from the other writers. But he’s writing to help believe and understand.
So we really need to understand faith. We did this in the first couple of weeks, really trying to unpack faith. I want to remind you, because you’re great bible students here, of some of those things that we said. Faith, according to John, is trust over time.
And you can see that John, who was known as the Son of Thunder—I mean, he was this emotional, kind of radical guy. And we read in the book of John that as he walked with Jesus, he became the one that Jesus loves. He became the one that leaned against the breast of Jesus, became the one that Jesus entrusted the care of his mother to.John had this great change going on in his life.
As Jesus began to do the miracle of the wedding at Cana, as John saw his zeal as he went to the temple with the whip and cleansed all of that; as John saw him caring for the Samaritan woman; and then also caring for the royal official, and the way that he was interacting with Nicodemus; it was like Jesus was breaking all of whatever seemed to be barriers between people and reconciling the whole world to himself—whether rich, poor, different ethnicities, socio-economic class—Jesus was just kind of meeting everybody, reconciling everybody to himself; as John saw all of these things he just began to put more and more trust in Jesus. He was actually able to make the leap from “This is not just some guy who’s a good rabbi teacher, but this guy is the actual creator God in the flesh.” I mean, that is just wild to think about being with somebody in the flesh but realizing they are so much more than that.
But that was what happened with John. He began to trust more and more over time. That’s a big part of faith. As we described here. We want God to just give us what we want and then we’ll believe. But God says as you continue to put your trust in him, as you step out into those uncomfortable places and find his faithfulness, that’s when you begin to have your faith built.” It’s trust over time.
I remember some friends and I, right after college, just had this idea that I just wanted to see what God can do and I had read some stories in the Old Testament about “Let’s just go for it and see what God can do.” So I talked some friends into going to Ireland with me. We bought a three-month ticket. We were just going to go to Ireland for three months and just say “Okay God, lead us, guide us and see what you can do.”
Some of you have heard me tell the story. God met us, God provided for us, I mean, just so many wonderful, wonderful things took place. For a young man it was really something that made me think I can put my trust in God. It wasn’t that God gave me something then I did, but it was something that I stepped out, being led of God and saying, “Okay, I’m going to go do this thing whether or not it works out. I don’t know.” But then the Lord showed up. So I would encourage you to take those steps. Trust over time.
Another way that the Bible explains faith is pledging allegiance. And we talked about that in one of the early messages. Actually it was on the Fourth of July weekend. We didn’t plan that. But it was pledging our allegiance to God. We’ve got to be careful that we don’t pledge allegiance to things that are not of God. We’ve got to make sure God is first and foremost.
Then the last thing, Hebrews tell us that faith is substance and evidence. If you’ve been to one of our Explore classes, which is kind of like our “new to the church” classes, you get to hear me unpack that. It’s been really meaningful for me. We’re going to be doing an Explore class pretty soon. If you’re someone who’s been checking out the church online and you’re ready to take that next step and really kind of make this your family, we’re going to be doing that pretty soon. So stay tuned for that.
Let’s continue on. Verse 32 is where we’re at now:
32 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
34 “Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”
35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 36 But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. 37 All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. 38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
So this is really a big deal. This is the gospel. Jesus is saying, ”If you come to me, I will keep you, I will cleanse you and I will raise you up in the last day.” This is what Jesus wants to do for you, no matter what you’ve done. No matter whether you think you fit or not. Whether you’re Jew or Gentile. Whether you know the Scriptures or not. This is what Jesus is saying to you, that if you will come to him and you will follow him and you will learn of him and you will receive him and you will let him rule your life, then he will raise you up in the last day to everlasting life. It’s just beautiful. It’s the best deal there ever is. And that’s what Jesus did.
He hadn’t gone to the cross and died at this point. But the proof that he actually can do what he’s saying right here came when he died on the cross for our sins and then rose from the dead victorious over sin and death. And that’s the message for each one of us.
In this passage I want us to realize that the third thing is, most people want Jesus to save them from whatever is bothering them right now. For these people it was the political turmoil they were going through. But the Jesus way wants to save you from everlasting separation from God, which we call hell.
Most people want God to just kind of help them in this life. But really, what Jesus came to do primarily, what God wants to do primarily in your life is save you from everlasting separation from God, which your sin brings about. He doesn’t want you to go to hell. He basically says, “If you want to go to hell, if you want to be separated from me, you’ll have to do it over my dead body my son’s dead body.”
Literally. Jesus was crucified. The only way you can get to hell is to basically walk over and say, “I don’t care about that. I don’t want anything to do with Jesus. I reject Jesus completely.” If that’s what you’re doing both with your words and your actions, then you’re going to be separated from God.
But if you say, “No, I want Jesus. I want life. I want to care about these things. And even though I want God to meet me in my physical stress right now, I really do care more about that and I want Jesus to meet me when I die.” Then that’s something that Jesus is saying is for you. That’s what God cares about way more than anything else we’re experiencing.
Let’s keep going. 41 through 59:
41 At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”
43 “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. 44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. 46 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. 47 Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
53 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.
The disciples are like, “Oh man. This is just killing this movement right now.”
57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
So he’s actually in the synagogue. He’s unpacking this concept, trying to get people to move from their physical, fleshly eyes to their spiritual everlasting eyes. And then he starts dropping these bombs about, “Look, if you really want to know what I’m saying, you have to eat my body and drink my blood if you want any part of me and at the kingdom that I have. If you want God to raise you up on the last day, you have to eat my flesh and drink my blood.”
This is not sounding very good. Then he says it again and again and again. Just in case nobody was weirded out, he wanted to make sure everyone in the room was totally weirded out. Then verse 60:
60 On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”
The disciples are so awesome.
61 Aware that his disciples were grumbling…
So, first of all, the Jews that were coming to have him lead this revolution, they were grumbling, “He’s talking about he came from heaven. We know where he came from. Talking about eating his flesh. How can that happen?”
And now his disciples are grumbling too.
Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? 62 Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! 63 The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life. 64 Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. 65 He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.” 66 From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
67 “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.
68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
So right there in verse 66, From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. We know that five thousand men came out because they wanted to kind of go to this revolution. They wanted to make him king. And he fed them, but then he left them. When they woke up and couldn’t find him, I don’t know if all five thousand or just some of them came, but they came to the other side of the lake. And there they found Jesus and began to teach them in a synagogue.
As he was doing this, I don’t know how many were there exactly, but it was a lot more than twelve, in one place we actually do see in another gospel there were about 120 followers of Jesus and then seventy followers—he sends out seventy disciples at one point.
But as they continued to follow him, and then he says this saying, this was kind of a moment of truth for these disciples, “You’ve got to eat my flesh and drink my blood,” it says that most of them went away. They were disappointed in Jesus. He was not going to lead the revolution they wanted. For those of you who are bible scholars, you’ll love this. Basically, when these Jews are saying to him, “Moses gave bread to the people in Exodus as they were set free from that oppression of Egyptian slavery,” what they were saying was, “Jesus we’ve seen you do miracles and wonders like Moses did. We’re experiencing severe oppression under the Romans like the Egyptians did to the Israelites before and now we’re seeing you multiply food out in the wilderness, are you going to deliver us? This is making up for a great exodus. Can you lead a deliverance right here in our time, in our place? We’re praying for it. We’re crying out to God.
And basically Jesus said, “No. I’m not here to bring about a natural revolution, or a practical or a fleshly even revolution. I’m here to do a work that is actually everlasting. A work that is in the Spirit. A work that will set you free from an oppression not of Roman order or whatever it might be…but the oppression of sin and death, which are mankind’s greatest enemies.” Sin and death is the oppression we’ve been living under ever since Adam and Eve decided to go their way instead of God’s way.
Sin and death is the shadow that hangs over all of society, that creates all the pain and agony we experience. Sin and death are the things that are so deep inside our souls that we can’t even live unrestrained. We can’t even live free without doing something ugly or horrible or hurtful to somebody else.
The sin and death that permeates our souls so intensely makes, as the Bible says, that even our righteousness is like filthy rags. So me trying to do the right thing often can actually hurt somebody else and not be good for somebody else. We have this sin and death so thick and heavy over all of creation, so intrinsic and permeating all of creation, that creation, the Bible says, is groaning, longing for redemption. Longing for Jesus to return and set us free from the oppression of sin and death.
And what Jesus is saying to us here is that that’s what he’s ultimately here to do. He’s come to show us the way of God, to show us the way of the Father, to die on a cross, to pay the price and penalty for our sins, and then to rise, to conquer death once and for all. And then we know that he’s seated at the right hand of the Father until the day that he comes back and he makes all things new. Basically, he undoes all of the sadness that death and sin has come.
And we’re in this in-between time. We’re in this waiting time, waiting for his return. We have the power and love of Christ. His Spirit is with us so that we can taste heaven right now. We can experience it. We can walk in that kingdom power right now. But at the same time, we still live in these bodies of death. We still live in a world filled with death.
So here’s so what I think how we go about both things: being born again in a spiritual way, and how we go about eating his flesh and drinking his blood in a spiritual way. Obviously Jesus wasn’t a cannibal.He’s not telling us to be cannibals. We need to see it with spiritual eyes.
And this is my best way to unpack it. How do we do this? Well there’s this phrase that I came across from a friend of mine, John Mark Comer who’s a pastor up in crazy town Portland. I want to pop it up and have you guys read this. Then I’ll unpack it a little bit.
“For Jesus, the devil’s primary strategy to ruin the soul and society isn’t what most of us expect. It’s lies. More specifically, it’s deceptive ideas that play to disordered desires that are normalized in a sinful society. In this teaching, we explore how we are transformed by Spirit and truth, and deformed by isolation and lies. And we look to Jesus’ example of spiritual disciplines as spiritual warfare.”
We’ve been talking about this in our Sunday morning gatherings that we have been having where we pray and intercede and engage in spiritual warfare. We feel like that’s exactly what the Church is supposed to be doing right now. You, as a Christian, you should be doing spiritual warfare.
“I’m not that spiritual.”
Well then you’re not that Christian. This is a time where we really need to take seriously these things of God. The battle is going on in our society more so than it was in prior years. Recently. Obviously there have been battles before. But the Church is called to battle in the Spirit right now. And if you’re not, you’re probably losing ground for you and your household. So this is a very serious thing.
The Spiritual warfare that Jesus shows us, his way, basically, I think it can be unpacked like this. The first thing we need to do is acknowledge there are deceptive ideas in our society. And they play to our disordered desires and they’re normalized in our sinful defiant society. This is hard for people to realize. I think all of us now are aware that are a lot of deceitful ideas being spread around by media, but social media, by left, by right, by you, by me. We’re perpetrators of these ideas that are not good. They are not true. They’re not right. They’re not helpful. We have to be aware of that.
But we also have to realize that, according to the fall, we were born with disordered desires. Inside you and I, we long for things that are not good and not right. And what our society is trying to do is make those things okay and right. I might long for somebody else’s house or property. I might long for somebody else’s paycheck or whatever. That is something I need to resist. That is something I need to work against in my own life. To find contentment. But in our society we say, “That ambition. That’s work. That’s all of those things.” And we try to normalize coveting, or envy, or jealousy. And it’s not right.
For some we say, Oh, well, you know you have these desires sexually. Whether it be for a woman that’s not your wife. Or for a man that’s not your husband. Or for someone of the same sex. Whatever it might be. For someone that’s really young. I mean all of these crazy things that people have. And it’s not “You’re a bad person and you’re horrible and God hates you because you have that.”
Please hear me. Please hear me. Please listen to what I’m saying. As a part of the fall we are all created with disordered desires, desires that are not in line with God’s will, which therefore do not bring about human flourishing. We’ve got to trust that he knows the order. He knows the design. He can give us the strength if we’ll eat his body and drink his blood daily in the Spirit. He will strengthen us and sustain us to overcome those disordered desires, and see where society’s just trying to normalize those things that will ultimately end up in our ruin as a society and as an individual.
I know it’s hard. I’m not saying it’s not. We all have to resist. Welcome to the resistance. And we need each other. We need the blood of Jesus. We need the body of Jesus to strengthen us and sustain us. We also need the body of Christ.
This gets us to number 2. So first we have to acknowledge that.
Secondly we need to read the scriptures. We need to process life with other believers, both past and present.
So the believers that wrote this book, the Bible, the believers that have written about the challenges we’re facing. There’s a lot we can learn. But we also need to do it in the fellowship together. That’s where life groups come in. That’s why gatherings are so important. We need to be in each other’s lives, supporting each other in these battles.
And we need to pray so that we’ll not be fooled and led astray.
This is simple stuff. And this right here doesn’t feel like spiritual warfare. It seems very practical. But this is spiritual warfare as well when we can do these things. The scriptures are powerful for bringing down strongholds. Other believers will help sustain you and you can link arms so that you stay strong. Prayer is where we get to hear God’s ideas instead of just the rhetoric or propaganda going around.
And the last thing is
We need to understand that we have disordered desires as a part of the fall of mankind from innocence and be strengthened by the life and love of Christ to overcome those desires.
If you are someone that has homosexual desires, I want you to understand that God has room for you, that God does not condemn you for that. I think you do have to swallow a hard pill and understand that the Bible and God would teach that those are not right desires. Those desires will not lead to human flourishing for you and for our society. And I know that’s very difficult.
But you’re not the only one. Those who have desires for people who are not their wives, those who have desires for money that’s not theirs, those who are greedy, those who are hateful, those who have experienced pain in a lot of other ways and they want to act out, this is all part of our challenge. That’s why we need each other. That’s why we have to come together and not villainize or victimize each other.
God has promised that, if you will come to Christ and you will daily take in his body and his blood, not in a real practical way, but in a spiritual way, you will feed on the life of Christ, you’ll feed on the love of Christ, you will be strengthened to overcome whatever sin or whatever disordered desire you might be dealing with and struggling with. And we all do. We all do. The church is full of people with disordered desires who are trying to rely on Christ to overcome those things for themselves, for their households, for their families, and for society as a whole. And that’s the good news of Jesus, that he didn’t just say these things, but then, at the end of his life, he practically allowed his body to be broken and his blood to flow so that we could spiritually receive the forgiveness and strength that we need.
We’re going to do that now. We’re going to put up a slide and have a little time of communion for you and your household. I really want you to take this time seriously. If you need to go over those last points that fine. But just take this time and spiritually feed on the love and the life of Christ, the body and blood of Jesus that was given for you. And find the strength that is there as we continue to do battle in our society. God bless you guys.
©️2020 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
The Social Justice of the Social Jesus
We’re going to go to John chapter 6 and I want to read it to us, get in our minds, and then we’re actually going to read another passage that tells the same story. John 6, we’re going to start in verse 1:
Some time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee (that is, the Sea of Tiberias), and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick. Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. The Jewish Passover Festival was near.
Series: John
John 6
David Stockton - August 9, 2020
(Starting at 4:38)
We’re going to go to John chapter 6 and I want to read it to us, get in our minds, and then we’re actually going to read another passage that tells the same story. John 6, we’re going to start in verse 1:
Some time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee (that is, the Sea of Tiberias), and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick. Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. The Jewish Passover Festival was near.
When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.
Philip answered him, “It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!”
Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”
You’ve got the personalities coming out. Philip was more of the business mind, where he’s like, “We can’t do this. What are you talking about?” He’s planning all the logistics, figuring out, “This does not compute.”
Then you’ve got Andrew who’s just kind of going, “Well, we’ve got this, we’ve got this, but I don’t know, you know.”
I like the personalities you get in the Bible.
Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass in that place, and they sat down (about five thousand men were there).
Now, whether it was just men or if it was families, its kind of hard to know. But here John is making note that there were five thousand men there. And we’re going to come back to that.
Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish.
When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.
After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.” Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.
So this is John’s account of this story, which is in all four gospel accounts, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This is one of the only things that is in all four of those accounts, because it’s so fascinating, so powerful, so amazing, that Jesus revealed the supernatural, intervening power of God in this moment by supplying food for all of these people from such a small source. How it went about, what took place, what it looked like when all of a sudden the basket just kept getting filled, I have no idea how it all went down. But it must have been so wonderful, so amazing. And all these people, just the physical hunger was met in this moment.
I want to go back to Matthew chapter 14 if you’ll turn there. We’ll get a little bit of detail that John doesn’t give us about what brought about this moment. John just basically says, “And then after this…” and then he goes into the story.
In Matthew 14, let’s get a little background on what was taking place in Israel, in Jesus’ life right before this moment. It says:
At that time Herod the tetrarch heard the reports about Jesus, and he said to his attendants, “This is John the Baptist; he has risen from the dead! That is why miraculous powers are at work in him.”
Now Herod had arrested John and bound him and put him in prison because of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, for John had been saying to him: “It is not lawful for you to have her.” Herod wanted to kill John, but he was afraid of the people, because they considered John a prophet.
So John was a righteous man. This is John the Baptist. This is Jesus’ cousin. He was doing great things for the people of God. He was calling them out of their wickedness, calling them out of their selfishness, out of their pride. And calling them to repent and get right with God. One of the things he did was he was speaking out against Herod and his family, the leaders of that day, the kind of Jewish aristocracy that were put in power by Rome.
Rome was dominating the whole world, but they would put local leaders in charge. So Herod was kind of a sell-out, what the Jews thought. He was kind of in bed with Rome and with the Jews and it was not a good situation. He was not loved by the people.
So John the Baptist saw some of the things that they were doing and he was saying, “It’s not right for you to be taking other people’s wives. It’s not right to be taking extra wives. This is not right. This is not Jewish. This is not Judaism. This is not of God.”
He was speaking out against those leaders and it ended up getting him arrested and put in prison. And there he was in prison. Then it says in verse 6:
On Herod’s birthday the daughter of Herodias danced for the guests and pleased Herod so much that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she asked. Prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me here on a platter the head of John the Baptist.” The king was distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he ordered that her request be granted and had John beheaded in the prison. His head was brought in on a platter and given to the girl, who carried it to her mother. John’s disciples came and took his body and buried it. Then they went and told Jesus.
So the grief of this moment, the outrage, the horror, the injustice. It must have just been absolutely brutal when this took place for the people of Israel. They’re oppressed, they’re struggling, they’re poor. The Roman domination has completely broken their backs. Now here, their ruler, Herod, does this completely disgusting act for a completely disgusting reason. And they’re left with this feeling.
And it says John’s disciples, the ones that were hanging out with John and helping with John’s ministry, they went and got his body and they buried him and they went and told Jesus. Now again, Jesus is not just someone who was a fan of John the Baptist. Jesus was John the Baptist’s cousin. Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist to fulfill all righteousness. John the Baptist had already been proclaiming that Jesus was the Messiah, he was the Lamb of God that was going to take away the sin of the whole world. And yet, now in this moment, John’s disciples come and tell Jesus the news of what took place.
I titled this message “The Social Justice of the Social Jesus.” In our day today there is a lot of zeal. There’s a lot of unrest. There’s a lot of outrage about a number of things. I don’t think it’s too wrong or too challenging to call this Jesus’ George Floyd moment. I mean, obviously the comparisons break down in a number of ways. But this really was an intense political, intense societal moment that was taking place in Jesus’ life.
I think it’s very important for us to look at what Jesus does. Because we’re all right now kind of stirred up. We’ve got the election challenges. Conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican. We’ve got the racial unrest, black, white, privilege, no privilege, systemic—we’ve got all these words that are kind of firing us all up. And there’s anger and guilt swirling around. And then we also have this COVID thing, which has a lot of confusion. Sometimes they say this, sometimes they say this. Sometimes you think this, sometimes you think that, about how to walk forward. What’s the best practices to do.
Our nation is so pitted against each other. And what I’m seeing is that it’s starting to seep into the church a little bit, too, where it just has no place. We’re called to be one. We’re one body. We have one head and that’s Jesus Christ. So we need to figure out how to be unified above all of our secondary ideas, our nonessential concepts. So it’s good for us to look at Jesus and what he did in his moment of real political unrest and turmoil.
So that’s what we have. This setup for this story of feeding the five thousand. Let’s continue in Matthew in verse 13, in these couple of verses before we go on.
When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place.
That was Jesus’ initial response.
Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.
And Matthew goes on to talk about what we’ve got in John. How Jesus separated them all into groups, had his disciples get them all sat down and then he goes and feeds the five thousand.
There are a couple of things I want us to notice here. When we put these two stories together, what we really have is an extremely outrageous, horrific political event or something that happened in society, an injustice, that causes this crowd to go and find Jesus. Now Jesus, when he heard it, he withdrew so the crowds came to find him.
The reason there were five thousand men, the reason there was this large crowd was not just because they were wanting to hang out with Jesus. It was a combo. They had seen the power of God revealed through Jesus. They had heard the teachings of Christ that seemed to cut through all the confusion that was going on in that day. And so, in this moment when they wanted to look to someone to lead, when they wanted to bring about some sort of social change, when they wanted to overthrow Herod, when they wanted to do something because they were so angry, they came the Jesus, which is a great thing to do.
But what they found, I think, surprised them. Because they came to Jesus to really say, “All right, Jesus, lead the movement. Lead the march. Let’s go tear this place down. Let’s go to the palace and let’s get rid of Herod. Let’s do all these things.”
But instead, Jesus withdrew to a quiet place. Jesus sat everyone down. Jesus healed the sick among them. Jesus fed them, meeting a practical need. And then, as we go back to the book of John chapter 6, it says, then after this—they were so blown away—Jesus was able to feed all of them. They’re going, “This really is the guy! This is it! Let’s do this thing.”
It says that Jesus, knowing they were going to try to make him king, he again withdrew to a quiet place. And then the very next story we have, he’s there in a quiet place praying because his heart is broken because his cousin was beheaded. His heart is broken because of the oppression and the injustice. But he goes to prayer. He withdraws to a quiet place and prays.
And then that night, he sends the disciples out and he keeps praying, but then he walks to them on water—which is an awesome story—walks to them on water, reassuring them that he is in control over all of this stuff. And then he departs to another quiet place with his disciples
I just think this is interesting because, you know, right now, what I’ve felt when I heard about George Floyd and some of the other cases, and I’ve heard the cry of the black community as they are just so frustrated about a lot of their situation and all of that. I immediately was like, “Okay, I want to hear.” I’ve told you guys a little bit of the story. Fifteen of us white pastors met with fifteen African American pastors. We just went to try and start the conversation, “Hey, tell us what’s going on. Tell us where we’re at. Tell us what we can do.”
It didn’t go very well. There was a lot of distance between us when we got there. And when we left there was still a lot of distance. It kind of broke my heart. I was like, “Okay, Lord, what do I do?”
So I’ve been diving in to try to learn. To research I’ve been reaching out to African American pastors or Christians that I can just say, “Hey, can I just have more one on one conversation to see if that helps.” I’ve been getting to know a lot of people. It’s been really neat and really fascinating. I’ve learned so much and been so encouraged by some of these men that are really trying to sort out what to do and really trying to do the Jesus way as they go through.
Then there was another meeting of those same pastors down at the capital where there was going to be a lot of confessions and a lot of commitment going forward. I watched it on Facebook and was like, “Yeah. These words are good. This is heading in the right direction.”
Then we actually flew in a guy from St. Louis who was a professor but right now he’s teaching math at a school right next to Ferguson. He was there all that time and he has a very researched mind and a lot of papers he wrote about that time and what should be done and what shouldn’t be done. He came out and shared with our staff. I got to be with him and really just discover a lot of different things that I didn’t know.
So I’ve just been trying to dive into this thing. Really, what I feel like God has told me is, a lot of times we’re supposed to practice what we preach. But I felt that what the Lord was telling me is that we need to practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice…before we preach. What I’ve seen a lot of Christians do is, they’re preaching without really digging in and trying to catch God’s heart.
And that’s the first thing we see Jesus do. Immediately when this happened, and he was Jesus, he knew what to do. But still, he withdrew to a quiet place to pray. And I just think, for Christians, we’ve got to be there. That’s our call right now. We’ve got to seek God’s heart. We’ve got to seek his presence. We’ve got to seek his power. Because without his power, all we’ve got is just more humanistic, secular ideas and strength. It’s not going to do anything at all for anyone.
There’s a story in the Old Testament that I’ve been chewing ever since all of this took place. It’s a really fun story. It’s about Joshua and the children of Israel, where they’re going to be heading into the Promised Land and they’re going to be having some battles between the Israelites and the Canaanites. One of the first places they went to was Jericho with those mighty walls. You’ve probably heard the story about the walls of Jericho.
The night before they were going into battle, Joshua, who was probably overwhelmed because of the intensity of the moment. They’re about to go into battle and he’s just a brand new leader. The Israelites are not warriors by any chance. Moses is gone now. He’s just kind of overwhelmed. So it says he went away to be by himself, away from the camp. And while he was there, I imagine he was praying, but all of a sudden it says that he saw a warrior standing next to him with his sword drawn. Joshua was startled. The question that he asked in Joshua chapter 4 is, “Are you for us or are you for our enemies?”
Then it says that the warrior answered, “Neither. But I’m the commander of the army of the Lord. And the place that you’re standing is holy. You need to take your shoes off.”
So Joshua takes his shoes off and has this little moment where he’s talking to the angel of God’s armies. A lot of people think this is a Christophany—an appearance of Christ in the Old Testament.
When I think about this story, it’s like the third option. “Are you for us or are you for our enemies?” And I can just hear people saying, “Are you for the blacks or are you for the whites?” “Are you for the Republicans or are you for the Democrats?” “Are you for my worldview, or my philosophy, or are you for the opposing world view philosophy?”
We’re pitting ourselves against each other. And we’re coming to the Lord, saying, “Are you for us or are you for our enemies?”
And God’s like, “No, man. No.”
First of all, God is for everyone. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him…whoever believes in him. Whatever their background is. Whatever their philosophy is. If they put their faith in Christ, if they give their life to Christ, they get eternal life. Whether they get everything right in this life or not, that is the trump card. Sorry I said trump there. I know you’re not supposed to say it. That overcomes anything we’ve ever done. The life and blood of Jesus overcomes anything that we could ever do wrong.
That’s the grace. That’s the beauty of it all, that somehow all of us, no matter how hard we try, no matter how hard we fight, no matter how zealous we are, no matter how right we think we are, we are still on the wrong side. Humanity will always be on the wrong side whenever we’re doing humanistic ideas. We’re all just trying to build a new tower of Babel. All these things, capitalism, socialism, communism, whatever it might be. Some might be better for some. Some might be better for others. Some might be better sometimes. Some might be better others. I don’t know. All of them are human philosophies that are going to leave us all empty and short of the glory of God. So we shouldn’t be fighting for them. We shouldn’t be making that be all we’re about.
We want to get on God’s side. And God’s side is found in the scriptures. God’s side is found in a relationship with him. God’s side is what’s going to get us from this life to fullness of life. We’ve got to find a way to get off of our side to God’s side. We know that Jesus Christ was the answer. God sent his son into the world to teach us what his side is all about, and to lay down his life to provide a bridge for us to get from our side to his side.
That’s why John, when he starts his book, he says, “In the beginning was the Word.” And he uses the word Word to describe Jesus. And the word Word in the Greek, and we’ve talked about this, is logos. And it’s basically God’s universal principle that rules the cosmos. It’s what makes life exist and happen. It’s God’s philosophy. It’s God’s politic.
So if we really want to get from our side to God’s side, we’ve got to go through Jesus. We’ve got to learn his teaching. We’ve got to learn his way. We’ve got to apply his blood to our life, We’ve got to invite him into our life. And for some of you, you might have spent your whole life looking for the next philosophy, or the next idea that might make you feel alive or whole. It’s never going to happen. There’s only one way to enlightenment and truth. There’s only one way to heaven in truth. There’s only one way to truth and that is Jesus Christ. He is the way. He is the truth. He is the life. And here’s the most amazing thing in the world. He loves you and he wants you to be on his side, be in his family. He wants to come and do life with you. That’s what the Bible teaches over and over again. And that’s what we see in the life of Jesus.
That’s the reality, We’re trying to figure out how to get from our side to God’s side. Sure enough, in Joshua’s day, God said, ‘Well this is how you do it. This is what you do to get on my side. I want you to walk around the walls of Jericho. I just want you to keep walking consistently day after day, day after day, in silence, keep walking and on the final day, I want you to shout.”
And we know the story. Those walls came down and God’s will and God’s purposes were brought out. And so for our day and age, when we see all these dividing walls, when we see all this division, I really feel like God has spoken clearly to us how we’re supposed to walk in his way, be on his side right now. It’s to consistently, day after day, whether COVID is here or COVID goes, whether the political party we want or don’t want wins, whether we’re black or white or brown or whatever, this is how we get the walls to come down in our society. We continue to walk with humility and we continue to walk with generosity. Those are the two things that are going to make the biggest difference in this time.
Jesus said, “If you want to come and follow me, come learn of me. Take my yoke upon you. Learn of me for I am meek and lowly and humble in heart.” That is the way of Jesus. That is the social Jesus. Humility and generosity. He withdrew to a quiet place. He drew everybody in. And he met their needs and served them by feeding the five thousand, by healing the sick, by teaching them his ways. And that’s what we get in John chapter six.
I want to talk a little bit about the power of God, as far as this miracle. Because this is a fascinating miracle. There are a number of miracles in the book of John, trying to teach us about God. And I’m going to tell us here in just a second one of the things that I think Jesus did that we can mirror as we go through this. One of them is the revealing of God’s supernatural intervening power. There are different people who have experienced that. There are people who haven’t experienced that. For me, I have seen God do miracles, signs and wonders. Oftentimes it’s not when I really thought he would. And it’s definitely not been every time.
There was a time where I was living in a village in Belize and I got to see the scriptures about casting out demons come to pass as I worked with a young man and prayed over him and he did experience two demons actually leave him. And he saw a man in white talking to him. It was fascinating and it was something that I hope I don’t ever have to be a part of again. But it was really cool to see the power of God in that supernatural intervening power show up for this young man,
I’ve also been here in the church, many times we’ve prayed for people. Sometimes we’ve believed that they’ll be healed and sometimes we don’t. And sometimes we get it wrong. Sometimes we didn’t think they’d be healed and then they got healed. Sometimes we thought they’d be healed and then they didn’t. But we’ve seen some actual, bona fide miracles. We’ve checked with people weeks afterward and months afterward and it’s still been true.
On the spectrum though, I just need us to understand. There’s this idea of Deism. Deism is the fact that God created the world, but then he doesn’t intervene. He just kind of wound up the clock and he’s letting it go. Deism is not a biblical idea. It’s not within orthodoxy. I don’t believe it’s true at all. But I can get why people would go there.
Most of the founding fathers of America actually were deistic. Thomas Jefferson created a bible and he took out all the miraculous signs and said, “Now this is the Bible that I believe in.”
The one problem with that is, if you take out the miracles, you take out the resurrection of Christ. You take out the resurrection of Christ, we are of men most miserable. We have nothing to hope for. Because if Jesus wasn’t a sacrifice that was able to rise from the dead, that means his sacrifice for us was not sufficient. So that’s why it just can’t be true.
But on the other side of Deism, you have this Pentecostalism, where it’s like God’s going to do everything you ever wanted him to do, and if he doesn’t, you’re doing it wrong. And that’s not a true at all either. That gets way outside the biblical concept.
There’s one other word I want you to know. It’s Cessationism. Cessationism is this idea that God stopped intervening supernaturally with miracles and all of that after the acts of the apostles. After Peter, James and John passed away. That it was a time that God was doing that and God is doing that no more. I can get why they would say that scripturally. But also, at the same time, I’ve just not found that to be true in my life. And I don’t think that makes sense of the God that we serve either. He’s the same yesterday, today and forever.
So somewhere in this camp between this Cessationism and this extreme Pentecostalism is where I think I’m trying to find my way, and where I think Living Streams is trying to find our way, where we do hope that God will supernaturally intervene, that he’ll give us grace in that way. But we also put our hope in God and we say, “If he doesn’t, then he’ll give us the grace to endure well.”
Like Paul said, “If he doesn’t give it to us then we can know that in our weakness his strength will be made perfect.”
I know some of you are both. Some of you have experienced those miracles and you’re rejoicing but then in other areas you haven’t. And some you have not experienced those miracles. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing anything wrong. But if God says no to the miracles, then that means he’s saying yes to the grace you need to endure. And though it might be hard, you can endure.
So that’s a little bit about the power of God, the miracles of God. I want to mention that because I want to list what I do see in the life of Jesus, what his version of social justice looks like.
First of all, withdrawing from the crowd. I think withdrawing from the crowd is something we all need to understand. There’s a lot of populism. There are a lot of people building their lives on rhetoric right now. We need to make sure to withdraw from the crowd to hear the voice of our God as he guides us through this challenging time.
Secondly, we need to serve practical needs The fatherless, the widow, the orphans—these are the people that God’s heart is really paying attention to. We should be doing that as well.
Revealing God’s supernatural intervening power. We just spoke about that.
Speaking about the kingdom of God. I think it’s important for us not to be spreading other news. Right now, if you’re just talking about conspiracy theories or you’re just talking about Republican agenda or Democrat agenda, if that’s what you’re posting and talking about the most, I think you just need to take a moment and check yourself. Make sure that you’re talking about the good news of Jesus. Because that’s the message we’re supposed to be speaking about above everything else.
It doesn’t mean you can’t have fun and talk about these things and see where we land in these things. But if the political stuff becomes more than the gospel, we’ve got something wrong. Jesus testified to the truth. As Christians, we need to really be careful to find out what is true and make sure and help other pope find out what is true. Not just what is rhetoric.
Ultimately the best thing we can do is sacrificial love. Give ourselves to others for their benefit.
I want to close with this story of a guy named Daryl Davis. He’s a musician. He’s an African American. In 1987 he was playing at this club and a white guy came up to him and they kind of had a drink together. He was just saying, “Man, you play that piano so well.” They had a conversation and he ended up finding out that this white man was a member of the KKK. Daryl Davis was kind of shocked and a little unsure of what to do. But they talked a little bit more.
And for whatever reason, Daryl Davis felt like this was something that he needed to do. He needed to meet these people. And basically, the premise is, “How can you hate me if you don’t know me?”
Over time, up to this point, Daryl Davis has been able to get to know two hundred different KKK members and actually see them get out of the KKK. He has a closet full of all their cloaks. As they get out of there, as they get to know him, they actually end up handing their cloak to him. I think it’s just a beautiful story of engaging into this world that we’re nervous about.
Jesus, that’s exactly what he did for us. He who knew no sin became sin for us. He came into our world. He felt our need. He felt our pain and all of that. And he gave himself completely, sacrificially to us. He entered into our world so that he could show us how to get out. And if you can get to know Jesus, if you can get in relationship with Jesus, you will begin to experience his wisdom, his power. And you’ll realize it is not of human origin. And it actually can help build the world and build your life and bring you to peace.
That’s our message today. We’re going to have a little response slide—some things you can pray through, as we end this message. If you don’t know Jesus, if you haven’t invited him to be the Lord of your life, then this prayer is a really great thing. If you pray this for the first time, we’d love to know about it. Please comment below. Let us know that you gave your life to Jesus and you’re ready to go that way. We’ll get you baptized, or whatever comes next. But for the rest of you who know Jesus, this is still a good thing to pray, just kind of realigning our hearts with him. God bless you and we’ll see you soon,
First, say Father in heaven I understand that I have done wrong. Please forgive me,
Next, say Father in heaven I understand that You want me on Your side and made. Way for me by the death and resurrection of Jesus. Please put Your Spirit in me to teach and guide and comfort me.
Next, say Father in heaven I understand that You want my life to be a blessing to others. Please help me to remember that and give me opportunities for that.
Finally, say Father in heaven I understand that one day You will send Jesus again and He will restore everything. Please help me to have hope and peace as I look forward to that day.
©️2020 Living Streams Church
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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.